French Life

Elizabeth Gaskell

To the best of our knowledge, the text of this
work is in the “Public Domain” in Australia.
HOWEVER, copyright law varies in other countries, and the work may
still be under copyright in the country from which you are accessing this website.
It is your responsibility to check the applicable copyright laws
in your country before downloading this work.

eBooks@Adelaide
The University of Adelaide Library
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005

Table of Contents

I

Paris, February, 1862.

We went to-day along the Boulevard Sévastopol, Rive Gauche, to pay a call. I knew the district well about six years
ago, when it was a network of narrow tortuous streets; the houses high, irregular, picturesque, historical, dirty, and
unhealthy. I used to have much difficulty in winding my way to certain points in the Quartier Latin from the Faubourg
St. Germain, where I was staying. Now, the Hôtel Cluny is enclosed in a neat garden, the railings of which run
alongside of the Boulevard Sévastopol; a little further, on the same side to the left, the Sorbonne Church is well
exposed to view; and the broad artery of the new Boulevard runs up to the Luxembourg gardens, making a clear passage
for air and light through the densely populated quartier. It is a great gain in all material points; a great
loss to memory and to that kind of imagination which loves to repeople places. The street in which our friend lived was
old and narrow; the trottoir was barely wide enough for one uncrinolined person to walk on; and it was
impossible to help being splashed by the passing carriages, which indeed threw dirt upon the walls of the houses till
there was a sort of dado of mud all along the street. In the grander streets of former days this narrowness did not
signify; the houses were of the kind called entre cour et jardin (of which there are specimens in Piccadilly),
with the porter’s lodge, the offices, and stables abutting on the street; the grand court intervening between the noise
and bustle and the high dwelling-house of the family, which out-topped the low buildings in front. But in the humbler
street to which we were bound there were few houses entre cour et jardin; and I could not help wondering how
people bore to live in the perpetual noise, and heavy closeness of atmosphere.

The friend we were going to see, Madame A — had lived in this street for many years. Her rooms were lofty and
tolerably large. The gloomy outlook of the long narrow windows was concealed by the closed muslin curtains, which were
of an irreproachable whiteness. I knew the rooms of old. We had to pass through the salle-à-manger to the
salon; and from thence we, being intimate friends, went on into her bedroom. The salle-à-manger had an inlaid
floor, very slippery, and without a carpet; the requisite chairs and tables were the only furniture. The pile of clean
dinner-plates was placed on the top of a china stove; a fire would be lighted in it, half-an-hour before dinner, which
would warm the plates as well as the room. The salon was graced with the handsome furniture of thirty or forty years
ago; but it was a room to be looked at rather than used. Indeed, the family only sit in it on Sunday evenings, when
they receive. The floor was parqueté in this room, but here and there it was covered with small
brilliantly-coloured Persian carpets: before the sofa, underneath the central table, and before the fire. There were
the regular pieces of furniture which were de rigueur in a French household of respectability when Madame A—
was married: the gilt vases of artificial flowers, each under a glass shade; the clock, with a figure of a naked hero,
supposed to represent Achilles, leaning on his shield (the face of the clock); and the “guéridon” (round,
marble-topped table), which was so long the one indispensable article in a French drawing-room.

But, altogether, Madame A—’s salon does not look very habitable; and we pass on into the bed-room, which
has little enough of daylight coming through the high narrow windows, but is bright and home-like from the brilliant
blaze and flicker of the wood-fire on the hearth. In the far corner is the bed: a grand four-post, with looped-up
draperies of some warm colour, which I dare say would prove to be faded if one were to see them close, in full country
daylight; but which look like a pictorial background to the rest of the room. On each side of the fire is a great
arm-chair; in front is a really comfortable sofa: not elegant, nor hard, nor gilded like the sofas in the drawing-room,
but broad, low, clean, fit to serve, as I dare say it has done before now, for a bed on occasion. Parallel to this, but
further from the fire, is a table with Madame’s work-box; her two pots of flowers, looking as fresh as if the plants
were growing in a country garden; the miniatures of her children, set up on little wooden easels; and her books of
devotion.

But Madame reads more than books of devotion. She is up in the best modern literature of more than one country.
To-day, we were exceedingly struck with her great powers of narration. She seizes the points of a story and reproduces
them in the most effective simple language. She is certainly aided in this by her noble, expressive face, still bearing
traces of remarkable beauty in the severe and classical style. Her gesticulation, too, is unlike what we commonly call
French; there is no rapid action of the graceful hands and arms, but a gentle and slow movement from time to time, as
if they sympathised with the varying expression of her face. She sat by her fire-side, dressed in black, her constant
colour; which she wears as appropriate to her age rather than to her condition, for she is not a widow. Every now and
then, she addressed a few tender words to an invalid of the family; showing that with all her lively interest in the
histories she was telling us, her eye and ear were watchful for the slightest signs of discomfort in another
. . . .

Our conversation drifted along to the old French custom of receiving in bed. It was so highly correct, that the
newly-made wife of the Duc de St. Simon went to bed, after the early dinner of those days, in order to receive her
wedding-visits. The Duchesse de Maine, of the same date, used to have a bed in the ball-room at Sceaux, and to lie (or
half-sit) there, watching the dancers. I asked if there was not some difference in dress between the day- and the
night-occupation of the bed. But Madame A— seemed to think there was very little. The custom was put an end to by the
Revolution; but one or two great ladies preserved the habit until their death. Madame A— had often seen Madame de
Villette receiving in bed; she always wore white gloves, which Madame A— imagined was the only difference between the
toilette of day and night. Madame de Villette was the adopted daughter of Voltaire, and, as such, all the daring
innovators upon the ancient modes of thought and behaviour came to see her, and pay her their respects. She was also
the widow of the Marquis de Villette, and as such she received the homage of the ladies and gentlemen of the ancien
régime.

Altogether her weekly receptions must have been very amusing, from Madame A—’s account. The old Marquise lay in bed;
around her sat the company; and, as the climax of the visit, she would desire her femme de chambre to hand
round the heart of Voltaire, which he had bequeathed to her, and which she preserved in a little golden case. Then she
would begin and tell anecdotes about the great man; great to her, and with some justice. For he had been travelling in
the South of France, and had stopped to pass the night in a friend’s house, where he was very much struck by the deep
sadness on the face of a girl of seventeen, one of his friend’s daughters; and, on inquiring the cause, he found out
that, in order to increase the portions of the others, this young woman was to be sent into a convent — a destination
which she extremely disliked. Voltaire saved her from it by adopting her, and promising to give her a dot
sufficient to insure her a respectable marriage. She had lived with him for some time at Ferney before she became
Marquise de Villette. (You will remember the connexion existing between her husband’s family and Madame de Maintenon,
as well as with Bolingbroke’s second wife.)

Madame de Villette must have been an exceedingly inconséquente person, to judge from Madame A—’s very
amusing description of her conversation. Her sentences generally began with an assertion which was disproved by what
followed. Such as, “It was wonderful with what ease Voltaire uttered witty impromptus. He would shut himself up in his
library all the morning, and in the evening he would gracefully lead the conversation to the point he desired, and then
bring out the verse or the epigram he had composed for the occasion, in the most unpremeditated and easy manner!” Or,
“He was the most modest of men. When a stranger arrived at Ferney, his first care was to take him round the village,
and to show him all the improvements he had made, the good he had done, the church he had built. And he was never easy
until he had given the new-comer the opportunity of hearing his most recent compositions.” Then she would show an old
grandfather’s high-backed, leather, arm-chair, in which she said he wrote his Henriade, forgetting that he was
at that time quite a young man.

Madame A— said that Madame de Villette’s receptions were worth attending, because they conveyed an idea of the ways
of society before the Revolution. There was one old French marquis, a contemporary of Madame de Villette’s, who
regularly came with his chapeau-bras under his arm, to pay her his respects, and to talk over the good old
times when both were young. Voltaire had called her “Belle et Bonne”, and by these epithets her friend the
Marquis saluted her to her dying day.

“Belle et bonne Marquise,” (and she had long ceased to be “belle;” even the other adjective was a
matter of doubt,) “do you know why I preserve this old hat with so much care, — with reverence, I may say?” said this
friend to her one day. “Years ago it had the privilege of saving your lovely cheek from being cut by the glass of your
carriage-window, when by some mal-adroitness you were on the point of being overturned, ma belle et bonne
Marquise.”

February. — We are staying with a French family of the middle class; and I cannot help noticing the ways of
daily life here, so different from those of England. We are a party of seven; and we live on the fourth floor, which is
extensive enough to comprise the two sitting-rooms, the bedrooms, the kitchen, and the chamber for the two maids. I do
not dislike this plan of living in a flat, especially as it is managed in Paris. I have seen the same mode adopted in
Edinburgh and Rome, besides other continental towns; but, as in these towns there is no concierge, I have
never liked it so much as in Paris. Here it seems to me to save one servant’s work, at the least: and, besides this,
there is the moral advantage of uniting mistresses and maids in a more complete family bond. I remember a very charming
young married lady, who had been brought by her husband from the country to share his home in Ashley Buildings,
Victoria Street, saying that she had two of her former Sunday scholars as servants, but that, if they had had to live
in the depths of a London kitchen, she should not have tried bringing them out of their primitive country homes; as it
was, she could have them under her own eye without any appearance of watching them; and, besides this, she could hear
of their joys and sorrows and, by taking an interest in their interests, induce them to care for hers. French people
appear to me to live in this pleasant kind of familiarity with their servants — a familiarity which does not breed
contempt, in spite of proverbs.

The concierge here receives letters and parcels for the different families in the house, which he generally
brings up himself, or sends by one of his family. Sometimes they are kept in the compartments appropriated to each
family in the conciergerie; and any one of the inhabitants who may return to the house looks in, and seldom
fails to have the complaisance to bring up letters, cards, or parcels for any family living below his étage.
The concierge is paid by the landlord for these services, in which is included the carrying up or down of a
moderate quantity of luggage. A certain portion of every load of wood or coal belongs to the concierge, as
payment for carrying it up to the respective apartments for which it is destined. If he cleans the shoes and knives for
any family, they pay him separately. He also expects an étrenne from each of the locataires on New
Year’s day; say a napoleon from each family, and half that sum from any bachelors lodging in the house. Very often he
knows how to wait at table, and his services are available for a consideration to any one living in the house. But he
must always provide a deputy in case of absence from his post. As the concierges are, however, generally
married, this does not press very hard upon him.

In the house where we are staying, the custom is for every one going out at night to lock up their apartment,
desiring the servants to go to bed at the usual time; to hide the key in some well-known and customary place (under the
door-mat for instance), and to take a bed-candle down to the conciergerie. When we return from our party, or
whatever it may be, we ring the bell, and the concierge, — perhaps asleep in bed in his little
cabinet, — “pulls the string, and the latch flies up,” as in the days of Little Red Ridinghood; we come in,
shut the great porte-cochère, open the ever-unfastened door of the conciergerie, light our own
particular bed-candles at the dim little lamp, pick out any letters, &c., belonging to us, which may have come in
by the late post, and go quietly up stairs. This sounds unsafe to our English ears, as it would seem that any one might
come in; but I believe there is a small window of inspection in all conciergeries which may be used in cases
of suspicion. The French at any rate esteem it more safe than our self-contained houses; and French servants in a
modest household, where no personal attendants are kept, would be very indignant if they had to sit up for their
mistresses’ gaieties. For, as a rule, French servants are up earlier than English ones.

In this house is a salle-à-manger with a fire-place, and a parquetted floor without a carpet. The shape is
an oblong, with the two corners near the door of entrance cut off to form cupboards. The walls are wainscoted with
deal, that is afterwards painted oak. The window-curtains and portières are made of handsome dark Algerine
stripe. As far as I can see, carpets are not considered a necessary article of furniture in France, but
portières are. And, certainly, the rich folds of the latter, and the polished floors, off which every crumb or
drop of grease is cleansed immediately, take my fancy very much. A door on one side of the windows opens into Madame’s
room; on the opposite side, another leads into the drawing-room.

If we were French we should have a cup of café-au-lait and piece of bread brought into our bedrooms every
morning; but, in deference to us as strangers, a tray (without a napkin) with sugar, a copper pan containing the
boiling milk just taken off the kitchen fire, and the white covered jug of bright strong coffee, is put on the
dining-room table. Also, in deference to our English luxury, there is a plate of butter; our French friends never take
butter, and not always bread, at this early breakfast. But where is the bread? I look round, and at last see a basket,
about a yard high, standing on the ground near the fireplace; it is of dimensions just sufficient to hold a roll of
bread a yard long and more, and about as thick as a man’s wrist. It looks like a veritable staff of life. None of our
French friends think of completing their toilette for this early breakfast, which indeed, as I have said, they would
have taken in their bedrooms, if we had not been here. Nor, indeed, is it any family gathering. I sometimes see the old
black skirts of our hostess quickly vanishing into her bedroom at the sound of my approach; and perhaps I find Nanette,
the youngest daughter, in a coloured petticoat and white camisole, her thick black hair put neatly away under a cap
which is on the full-dress side of a nightcap. She reddens a little as she wishes me Bon jour, as she knows
that hers is not the finished morning-toilette of an English young lady. But, two hours hence, who so neat as Nanette
in her clean print-gown of some delicate pattern, her black hair all brushed, and plaited, and waved, and
crêpé? For now she has done her household work; perhaps she has helped Julie to make her own bed; she has
certainly dusted her room, with all its knick-knacks and ornaments.

Madame, too, has been out to market; half across Paris, it may be, in her old black gown, to some shop she knows of,
where she fancies such and such an article can be had better or cheaper. She has gone by the omnibus, taking advantage
of the correspondance, by which, on payment of thirty centimes, and declaring her wish for a
correspondance ticket to the conducteur of that which passes her door, she is conveyed in it to the
general omnibus office, close to the Place des Victoires, where she may have to wait for a few minutes for an omnibus
going in the direction for which her correspondance ticket is taken. If she has to return by any of the midway
stations at which omnibuses stop, she has to purchase a ticket with a number upon it at the bureau, and await
her turn, at busy times of the day — say at five o’clock, at the Place Palais-Royal. Her number may be eighty-seven,
while the next Grenelle omnibus is filling with twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, and so on, as the
conducteur calls the numbers. But in the morning they are not so crowded; and Madame is always at home, and
dressed with delicate neatness, by eleven o’clock, the time of our “second déjeûner,” or what we should call
lunch in England. This breakfast consists generally of cold meat, a rechauffé of some entrée or
dressed vegetables of the day before, an omelette, bread, wine, and a pot of confitures. For us our kind
hostess has tea; but I can see that this is not their ordinary custom. It is curious to see how little butter is eaten
in a French family; they, however, make up for this by the much greater use of it in cookery; for vegetables form, a
dish by themselves, always requiring either gravy, butter, or oil, in their preparation. After lunch is over, we all
sit down to work; perhaps Nanette practises a little, and perhaps some of us go out for a walk, but always with some
object, either of pleasure or business. A Frenchwoman never takes a walk in the English constitutional sense. There are
books about in the salon, but not so many as in England. They have nothing equivalent to “Mudie” in Paris, and
the books of their circulating libraries are of so very mixed a character, that no careful mother likes to have them
lying about on the table, Indeed, “novels and romances” are under much the same ban as they were under in England
seventy or eighty years ago. There is the last Revue des Deux Mondes, and a pamphlet or two besides, lying by
Madame’s work-basket, and there are the standard French authors in the bookcase in the cupboard. Yet, somehow, my
friends always know what is going on in the literary world of Paris. The newspapers here are so doctored that they are
deprived of much of the interest which usually attaches to political news; but I generally see La Presse lying
about.

Once a week, Madame “receives.” Then the covers are taken off the furniture in the salon; a fresh nosegay
is put in the vase; Madame and Mademoiselle and Nanette put off their final dressing for the day till after the second
breakfast, and then appear in the gowns they wear on jours de fêtes. Monsieur keeps out of the way, but
nevertheless is much disappointed if, when we all meet together at dinner, we have not accumulated a little stock of
news and gossip to amuse him with. Madame’s day of reception is well known to all her friends and acquaintances, who
make a point of calling on her two or three times a season. But sometimes no one comes at all on the Thursdays, and it
is rather flat to sit from two to five or thereabouts in our company dresses, with our company faces, all for no use.
Then again, on other Thursdays, the room is quite full, and I sit and admire Madame’s tact. A new arrival comes up to
her, and, without appearing to displace any one, the last comer invariably finds an empty chair by the lady of the
house. The hostess also accompanies every departing guest to the room-door, and they part with pretty speeches of
affection and good-will, sincere enough, I do not doubt, but expressive of just those feelings which the English
usually keep in the background.

On Thursdays we have generally much the same sort of dinner that in England we associate with the idea of
washing-days; for both Julie and Gabrielle have been busy admitting or letting out visitors; or at any rate Madame
anticipated this probability when she ordered dinner.

The dinner-hour is six o’clock; real, sharp six. And here I may warn my English friends of the necessity of
punctuality to the hour specified in a French dinner invitation. In England, a quarter of an hour beyond the time is
considered as nothing, and half an hour’s grace is generally acceded. But it is not so in France; and it is considered
very ill-bred to be behind the time. And this remark applies not merely to the middle-class life I have been
describing, but to the highest circles. Indeed, the French have an idea that punctuality is a virtue unknown among the
English; and numerous were the stories of annoyance from English unpunctuality which the French officers brought home
from the Crimea. But, to return to our day at Madame —’s . We do not dress for dinner, as we should do in England; that
ceremony, as they consider it — refreshment, as we should call it — is reserved for the days when we go into society,
and then it takes place after dinner.

We have soup-always good. On Fridays we have fish; not from any religious feeling, but because that is the day when
the best fish is brought into Paris, and it is not very fresh even then. Then we have a made-dish, or two or three
times a week the bouilli from which the stock for the soup is made-a tender, substantial, little hunch of
boiled beef of no known joint. Then come the vegetables, cooked with thick rich gravy, which raises them to the rank
they hold in a French dinner, instead of being merely an accessory to the meat, as they are in England. The
rôti and the salad follow. The mixing of the salad is too important an operation to be trusted to a servant.
As we are here, Madame does not like to leave her visitors; but I see Gabrielle peep from behind the
portiéres, and make a sign to Mademoiselle about five minutes before dinner; and Mademoiselle goes into the
salle-à-manger, and Madame rather loses the thread of her discourse, and looks wistfully after her daughter;
for, if Monsieur is particular about anything, it is about his salads. Strictly speaking, Madame tells me, the
vegetables ought to be gathered while the soup is on the table, washed and cleansed while we are eating the
bouilli, and sliced and dressed with the proper accompaniments while the rôti is being brought in.
Madame’s mother always mixed it at the table, she says, and I have no doubt Madame follows the hereditary precedent
herself, when she has no foreign visitors staying with her. After this, a chocolate custard, or a sweet omelette, a
purée of apples, perhaps; and then dessert is put on the table — a bit of gruyére cheese under a
glass, and the “Quatre Mendiants,” i.e., nuts, almonds, raisins, figs, called after the four begging
Orders of friars, because these fruits are so cheap that any beggar can have them.

We have a little cup of black coffee all round, when we return to the salon; and, if we were not here, our
friends would have nothing more that night; but out of compliment to us there is tea at nine o’clock, that is to say,
there is hot water with a spoonful of tea soaked in it. They look upon this mixture in much the same light as we
consider sal volatile — not quite as a dram, but as something that ought to be used medicinally, and not as a
beverage.

March 10th. — Madame and I have had a long talk about prices, expenditure, &c. As far as I can
make out, provisions are to the full as dear as in London; house-rent is dearer, servants’ wages are much the same. She
pays her cook and housemaid four hundred and fifty and four hundred francs respectively. But the household work is
differently arranged to what it is in England. The cook takes the entire charge of a certain portion of the apartment,
bedrooms included; the housemaid attends to the rest, waits at table, helps one of the daughters of the house to get up
the fine linen, and renders them any little services they may require in dressing. The cook is enabled to take part of
the household-work, because it is the custom in Paris to prepare provisions in the shops where they are sold, so that
the cook can buy a sweetbread, or small joint, or poultry, ready-larded, the spinach ready-boiled and pulped for a
purée, vegetables all cut into shapes for her soup, and so on. The milk, which I had remarked upon as so
remarkably good, is, it appears, subjected to the supervision of inspectors armed with lactomètres,
delicately-weighted glass-tubes marked with degrees: this ought to sink up to a particular number in good unadulterated
milk, and all that is brought into Paris is tested in this and other ways at the various barrières. It is very
difficult, however, to obtain milk in the afternoons or evenings, even at the crêmeries, without ordering it
beforehand. The Government regulates the price of bread, which is lower in Paris than in the neighbouring towns; the
legal tariff is exposed in every baker’s shop, and false weights and measures are severely punished.

As to dress, from what I can gather, I think that good articles bear the same price as in England; but in our shops
it is difficult to meet with an inferior article in even moderately good taste, while in France those who are obliged
to consider expense can find cheap materials of the most elegant design. Then French ladies give up so much more
thought and time to dress than the English do; I mean in such ways as changing a gown repeatedly in the course of a day
if occasion requires, taking care never to wear a better dress when an inferior one will do — no! not even for five
unnecessary minutes. And, when handsome articles are taken off, they are put by with as much care as if they were
sleeping babies laid down in a cot. Silver paper is put between every fold of velvet or of silk; cushions of paper are
placed so as to keep the right sit of any part; ribbons are rolled up; soiled spots are taken out immediately; and thus
the freshness of dress which we so much admire in Frenchwomen is preserved; but, as I said, at a considerable expense
of time and thought in the case of people of moderate means. Madame — declares that she knows many a young French
couple who have reduced their table to the lowest degree of meagreness, in order that the wife (especially) might be
well dressed. She says that dress is the only expenditure for which a Frenchwoman will go into debt.

I remember some years ago hearing a letter from the Prince de Ligne read at Lord E—’s . He gave an account in it of
the then recent coronation at Moscow, and went on to speak of the French Emperor’s politics. As one of his engines of
influence, the Prince gravely named le luxe de la toilette, as an acknowledged political means. At the time, I
remember, I wondered in silence; but things have come to my knowledge since then which make me understand what was then
meant. Six years ago a friend took me to call on Madame de —. It was a raw, splashy, February day; and, as we walked
through the slushy streets, half-covered with melting snow, my friend told me something about the lady we were going to
see. Madame de — was married to the eldest son of a Frenchman of rank; she herself belonged to an old family. Her
husband was a distinguished member of one of the Academies, and held a high position among those who had devoted
themselves to his particular branch of recondite knowledge. Madame de — was one of the lionnes of Paris, and
as a specimen of her class we were now going to see her. She and her husband had somewhere about seven thousand a year;
but for economy’s sake they lived in an apartment rather than a house. They had, I think, two or three children. I
recollect feeling how out of place my substantial winter-dress and my splashed boots were, the moment I entered the
little ball or anteroom of her apartment.

The floor was covered with delicate Indian matting, and round the walls ran a bordering of snowdrops, crocuses,
violets, and primroses, as fresh and flowering as if they were growing in a wood, but all planted by some Paris
gardener in boxes of soil, and renewed perpetually. Then we went into the lady’s own boudoir. She was about thirty, of
a very peculiar style of beauty, which grew upon me every moment I looked. She had black hair, long black curling
eyelashes, long soft grey eyes, a smooth olive skin, a dimple, and most beautiful teeth. She was in mourning; her thick
hair fastened up with great pins of pearls and amethysts, her ear-rings, brooch, bracelets, all the same. Her gown was
of black watered silk, lined with violet silk (wherever a lining could be seen), her boots black watered silk, her
petticoat of stiff white silk, with a wreath of violet-coloured embroidery just above the hem. Her manners were soft
and caressing to the last degree; and, when she was told that I had come to see her as a specimen of her class, she was
prettily amused, and took pains to show me all her arrangements and coquetteries. In her boudoir there was not
a speck of gilding; that would have been bad taste, she said. Around the mirrors, framed in white polished wood,
creeping plants were trained so that the tropical flowers fell over and were reflected in the glass. There was a fire,
fed with cedar-wood chips; and the crimson velvet curtains on each side of the grate had perfumes quilted within their
white silk linings. The window-curtains were trimmed with point lace. We went through a little ante-chamber to Madame
de —’s bed-room — an oblong room, with her bed filling up half the space on one side; the other all wardrobe, with six
or seven doors covered with looking-glass, and opening into as many closets. After we had admired the rare Palissy
ware, the lace draperies of the mirror, the ornaments on the toilette-table, and the pink silk curtains of the bed, she
laughed her little soft laugh, and told me that now I should see how she amused herself as she lay in bed of a morning:
and pulling something like a bell-rope which hung at the head of her bed, the closet doors flew open, and displayed
gowns hung on wire frames (such as you may see at any milliner’s ): gowns for the evening, and gowns for the morning,
with the appropriate head-dresses, chaussures, and gloves, lying by them.

“I have not many gowns,” said she. “I do not like having too many, for I never wear them after they are a month old;
I give them to my maid then, for I never wear anything that is old-fashioned.”

I was quite satisfied with my lionne. She was quite as much out of the way of anything I had ever seen
before as I had expected. But, to go on with the bearing she had upon the Prince de Ligne’s letter, I must not forget
to say that Madame de — expressed very strong political opinions, and all distinctly anti-Bonapartean. Among other
things she mentioned was the fact that, when her husband went to pay his respects as a member of the Academy of — to
the Emperor at the Tuileries, she would not allow him to use their carriage (nor indeed was he willing to do it, but
went in a hackney coach), saying that the arms of the de — s should never be seen in the courts of a usurper. Two years
afterwards I came to Paris, and I inquired after M. and Madame de —. To my infinite surprise, I heard that he had
become a senator, one of that body who receive about a thousand pounds a year from Government, and who are admitted to
that dignity by the express will of the Emperor. How in the world could it have come about? And Madame, too, at all the
balls and receptions at the Tuileries! The arms of the de — were no longer invisible in the courts of a usurper. What
was the reason of this change? Madame’s extravagance. Their income would not suffice for her luxe de toilette,
and the senator’s salary was a very acceptable addition.

April 24th. — We were asked to go in some evening, pour dire le petit bon-soir, at a
neighbour’s house. Accordingly we walked thither about eight o’clock. M. E—‘s house is one of the most magnificent in
this quartier: it is on the newly-built Boulevard de Sévastopol. M. E— himself is a leading man in his
particular branch of trade, which, in fact, he has made himself; and he is now a French millionaire, as different from
an English one as francs are different from pounds. I remember, when I first knew monsieur and madame, they lived in an
apartment over the shop; and this was situated in one of the narrow old streets of the Quartier Latin. I was asked
there to dinner, and I had to make my way through bales of goods, that were piled as high as walls on each side of the
narrow passage through the shop. I went through madame’s bed-room, furnished with purple velvet and amber satin, to the
room where we assembled before dinner.

It was a weekly dinner, at which all M. E—’s family came, as a matter of course; and any one connected with him in
business was also sure of finding a place there. The table was spread with every luxury, and there was almost an
ostentatious evidence of wealth, which contrasted oddly and simply with the hard signs of business and trade down
below. I fancy their way of living at that time must have been like that of the great old City families of the last
century. And there was another resemblance. Two generations ago it was customary for our own London merchants to retain
their married children under the paternal roof, for the first year at least; and so it was at M. E—’s . His own child,
his wife’s children - for they had each been married before — lived in the same house as he did, both in winter and
summer, in town and country. Yet the younger generation were all married, and had families. All the grandchildren,
little and big, were assembled at these weekly dinners; if there was not room for them at the principal table, there
were nurses and servants ready to attend upon them at side-tables. And now, when increasing and well-deserved
prosperity has enabled M. E— to remove into the large hotel to which we have been to-night, to “say our little
good-evening,” I find that his sons and his daughters, his maid-servants and his men-servants, have all migrated with
him in truly patriarchal fashion.

We did not see them all to-night, for some have already gone into the country, whither the others are going to
follow in a day or two. Out of compliment to us, tea was brought in — tea at a guinea the pound, as Madame E— informed
us. I saw that the family did not like the drink well enough to wish to join us. There was a little telegraphing as to
who was to be the victim, and keep us company; and the young lady singled out as the tea-drinker for the family took
care to put in so much sugar that I doubt if she could recognise the flavour of anything else. The others excused
themselves from taking tea by saying — one, that she had been so feverish all day; another, that he felt himself a good
deal excited, and so on. Sugar is considered by the French as fitted to soothe the nerves, and to induce sleep. I
really am becoming a convert to this idea, and can take my glass of eau sucrêe as well as any one before going
to bed; indeed, we have a little tray in our bed-room, on which is a Bohemian glass caraffe of water, a goblet with a
gold spoon, and a bowl of powdered sugar. But I think it is a drink for society, not for solitude. Inspirited by the
example of others, I relish it; but I never tipple at it in private.

Somehow, to-night we began to talk upon the custom of different families of relations living together. I said it
would never do in England. They asked me, why not? And, after some reflection, I was obliged to confess we all liked
our own ways too much to be willing to give them up at the will of others — were too independent, too great lovers of
our domestic privacy. I am afraid I gave the impression that we English were too ill-tempered and unaccommodating; for
I drew down upon myself a vehement attack upon the difficulties thrown in the way of young people’s marrying in
England.

“Even when there is a great large house, and a table well-spread enough to fill many additional mouths, they tell me
that in England the parents will go on letting their sons and daughters waste the best years of their lives in long
engagements,” said Madame E—. “That does not sound to me amiable.”

“It is not the custom in France,” put in her husband. “You English are apt to think us bad-tempered, because we talk
loud, and use a good deal of gesticulation; but I believe we are one of the most good-tempered nations going, in spite
of the noise we make.”

By-and-by, some one began to speak of Les Misérables; and M. E — like a prosperous merchant as he is,
objected to the socialist tendency of the book. From that we went on talking about a grève (or strike) which
had lately taken place among the builders in Paris. They had obtained their point, whatever it was, because it was the
supreme aim of the Government to keep the “blouses” — the Faubourg St. Antoine — in good-humour; and “Government,” in
fact, has the regulation of everything in France. M. E— said that the carpenters were now about to strike, encouraged
by the success of the builders, and that he heard from his own carpenter that the object they were going to aim at was
that skilled and unskilled labour should be paid at the same rate — viz., five francs a-day. He added that the
carpenter, his informant, looked upon this project with disfavour, saying it might be all very well as long as there
was enough of work for all; but, when it grew scarce, none but the best workmen would have any employment, as no one
would send for an inferior craftsman, when he could have a first-rate one for the same money.

May 4th. — It is becoming intolerably hot in Paris. I almost wish the builders would strike, for
my part, for the carriages scarcely cease rambling past my open windows before two; and at five the men are clapping
and hammering at the buildings of the new boulevard opposite. I have had to go into the narrow streets of the older
parts of Paris lately; and the smells there are insufferable — a mixture of drains and cookery, which makes one loathe
one’s food. Yet how interesting these old streets are! and the people inhabiting them are quite different to those of
the more fashionable quarters: they have so much more originality of character about them; and yet one sees that they
are the descendants of the Dames de la Halle, who went out to Versailles on the memorable fifth of October.

I see curious little customs too in these more primitive parts of the town. Every morning a certain number of
Sisters of Charity put themselves at the disposal of the Mairie of the Arrondissements. There were
formerly only twelve arrondissements; but now, owing to the extension of the city of Paris, there are twenty.
In the former days, before the annexation of the suburbs to the city in 1859, by which the number of the
arrondissements was increased to twenty, it was “slang” to speak of any disreputable person as belonging to
the treizième — an arrondissement not recognised by any law. Every such division has a maire
and two adjoints, who are responsible for the well-doing and well-being of the district in their charge. I see
the “Sisters” leaving the Mairie on their errands of mercy early every morning. About the same time the
chiffonier comes his rounds, eagerly raking out the heaps of dust and rubbish before the doors. Then,
by-and-by — generally, however, after eleven, that universal meal-hour — I meet an old woman busily trotting along
towards the Luxembourg Gardens, surrounded by fifteen or twenty little children, aged from two or three years to seven
or eight. Their parents pay the old lady about ten centimes an hour to take their children out, and give them a walk or
a game of play in the gardens.

It is pretty to see her convoy her little regiment over a crossing; it reminds me of the old puzzle of the fox, the
goose, and the bag of corn. The elder children are left in charge on one side, while the very little ones are carried
over; then one of the oldest is beckoned across and lectured on her care of them, while the old woman trots back for
the rest; and I notice she is much more despotic during her short reign of power than the old woman herself. At length
they are past all dangers, and safe in the gardens, where they may make dirt-pies to their hearts’ content, while their
chaperon takes out her knitting and seats herself on a bench in their midst. Say she has fifteen children, and keeps
them out for two hours, it makes her a little income of half-a-crown a day; and many a busy mother is glad that her
child should have happy play and exercise, while she goes a-shopping, or does some other piece of house-keeping work,
which would prevent her from attending properly to her child. Each mairie has its salle d’asile (or
infant-school) and its crêche (or public nursery), under the superintendence of the “Sisters;” but perhaps
these are for a lower class than my little Luxembourg friends. Their mothers are, for the most part, tolerably well
off, only not rich enough to keep a servant expressly for the children.

Then the shop-placards in these old-fashioned parts of the town are often amusing enough. For instance the other day
I saw a crowd in a by-street, near the Rue l’École de Médecine, all intent upon a great piece of written paper put out
of the window of a shop, where almost every article of woman’s dress was to be sold. It was headed, in letters almost a
quarter of a yard long:

MA FEMME EST FOLLE.

A person, of whom I asked the meaning, laughed a little as he said —

“Oh! it is only a contrivance for attracting custom. He goes on to state, lower down in the paper, that his wife,
being mad, offered certain gown-pieces for sale yesterday at a ruinous price (they are really only about half a franc
lower than what you can get them for at any other shop) that he is miserable in the conflict he is undergoing between
his honour and the prospect of the sacrifice he will have to make, if he sells them at the price his wife offered them
for; but, ‘Honour above all,’ they shall be sold at that price, and therefore every one had better rush in and
buy.”

May 7th. — Seeing an apartment to let in the Place Royale, we went over it yesterday. I have
always liked the looks of this stately old place; so full of historical associations too. Then, again, the
quietness of it charms me; it is almost like a cloister, for no carriages can come in; and the sheltered walks under
the arcades must be very pleasant to the inhabitants on rainy days. The houses are built of very handsome red bricks
with stone-facings, and all after the same plan, designed by an architect of the time of Henry IV. — about our Queen
Elizabeth’s reign; but, if the Place Royale were in England, we should date it, judging from the style of the
architecture, a century later at least. It is more like the later additions to Hampton Court. There is a pleasant
square in the centre, with a fountain, shady chestnut trees, and gay flower-beds, and a statue of Louis XIII. in the
midst. Tradition says, that it was either on this piece of ground, or very near it, that the famous masque took place
in the old Palace des Tournelles, when, the dresses of the masquers catching fire, King Charles VI., who was one of
them, became mad in consequence of the fright and, it was to soothe his madness, that our present playing-cards were
invented.

When first the present place was built, all the fashionable world rushed to secure houses in it. This was the old
hotel of the De Rohans; that was Cardinal de Richelieu’s before his Palais Cardinal — the present Palais Royal — was
completed; in this house Madame de Sévigné was born — and so on, Now, the ground floor, which was formerly occupied by
the offices of the great houses above, is turned into shops, ware-houses, and cafés of a modest and
substantial kind; and the upper floors are inhabited by respectable and well-to-do people, who do not make the least
pretension to fashion. The apartment we went over consisted of five handsome and very lofty reception-rooms, opening
out of one another and lighted by many high narrow windows, opening on to a wide balcony at the top of the arcade. One
or two of these rooms were panelled with looking-glass, but old-fashioned, in many pieces, not like our modern plates
in size. Possibly it was Venetian, and dated from the times of the early proprietors.

The great height of the rooms, as compared to their area, struck me much. Only two or three of the rooms had
fireplaces, and these were vast and cavernous. Besides the doors of communication between the rooms, there was, in
each, one papered like the walls, opening into a passage which ran the whole length of the apartment. On the opposite
side of this passage there were doors opening into the kitchens, store-rooms, servants’ bed-rooms, &c. — so small,
so close, so unhealthy. Yet in those days there were many servants and splendid dinners. Perhaps, however, some of the
lacqueys slept on the upper floor, to which there is now no access from the apartments au premier. At the end
of the passage was the bed-room of the late proprietress, with a closet opening out of it for her maid. The bed-room
was spacious and grand enough; but the closet-well, I suppose she could lie full length in it, if she was not
tall. The only provision for light and air was a window opening on to the passage. We inquired the rent of this
apartment: 3000 francs — £120. But perhaps Monsieur le propriétaire might reduce it to 2500 francs — £100. The
front-rooms were charming in their old-fashioned stateliness; but, if I lived there, I should be sorely perplexed as to
where my servants were to sleep.

May 10th. — Utterly weary of the noise and heat of Paris, we went out to St. Germain yesterday. I
had never been there before; and now, once having been, I want to go again. It is only half-an-hour from Paris by
railroad. We could just see Malmaison as we went along, past pretty villas with small gardens brilliant with flowers,
as French gardens always are. All the plants seem to ‘go into flower; the mass of bloom almost over-balances the
leaves. I believe this is done by skilful pruning and cutting-in. For instance, they take up their rose-trees at the
beginning of February, and cut off the coarse red suckers and the superfluous growth of root. The hedges to these
little suburban gardens are principally made of acacia, and pollard trees of the same species border nearly all the
roads near Paris. In the far distance, on the left, almost against the horizon, we saw the famous Aqueduct de Marly,
formerly used to conduct a part of the water to Versailles. I do not know what it is in the long line of aqueducts and
viaducts which charms one. Is it the vanishing perspective which seems to lead the eye, and through it the mind, to
some distant invisible country? or is it merely the association with other aqueducts, with the broken arches of the
Claudian aqueduct, stretching across the Campagna, with Nismes, &c.? By means of some skilfully-adjusted
atmospheric power, the trains have of late years been conducted up to nearly the level of the terrace at St. Germain’s
by a pretty steep inclined plane. We went up a few steps on leaving the station, and then we were on the plateau, the
castle on our left, and a Place at the entrance to the town on the right.

Nothing could be more desolate-looking than the chateau; the dull-red bricks of which it is built are painted
dark-lead colour round the many tiers of windows, the glass in which is broken in numerous places, its place being here
and there supplied by iron bars. Somehow, the epithet that rose to our lips on first seeing the colouring of the whole
place, was “livid.” Nor is the present occupation of the grim old château one to suggest cheerful thoughts. After being
a palace, it was degraded to a caserne, or barracks, and from that it has come down to be a penitentiary. All
round the building there is a deep dry area, railed round; and now I have said all I can against St. Germain and
recorded a faithful impression at first sight. But, two minutes afterwards, there came a lovely slant of sun-light; the
sun had been behind a fine thunderous cloud, and emerged just at the right moment, causing all the projections in the
chateau to throw deep shadows, brightening the tints in all the other parts, calling out the vivid colours in the
flower-beds that surround the railing on the park side of the chateau, and half-compelling us with its hot brilliancy,
half luring us by the full fresh green it gave to the foliage, to seek the shelter of the woods not two hundred yards
beyond the entrance to the park.

We did not know where we were going to, we only knew that it was shadowed ground; while the “English garden” we
passed over was all one blaze of sunlight and scarlet geraniums, and intensely blue lobelias, yellow calceolarias, and
other hot-looking flowers. The space below the ancient mighty oaks and chestnut-trees was gravelled over, and given up
to nursery-maids and children, with here and there an invalid sitting on the benches. Mary and Irene were bent upon
sketching; so we wandered on to find the impossible point of view which is to combine all the excellences desired by
two eager sketchers. So we loitered over another hundred yards in the cool shade of the trees. And suddenly we were on
the terrace, looking down over a plain steeped in sunlight, and extending for twenty miles and more. We all exclaimed
with delight at its unexpectedness; and yet we had heard of the terrace at St. Germain, and associated it with James
II. and Maria d’Este all our lives. The terrace is a walk as broad as a street, on the edge of the bluff overhanging
the silver tortuous Seine. It is bounded by a wall. just the right height for one to lean upon and gaze and muse upon
the landscape below. The mellow mist of a lovely day enveloped the more distant objects then; but we came again in the
evening, when all the gay world of St. Germain was out and abroad on the terrace listening to the music of the band;
and we could then distinguish the aqueduct of Many on our right, before us the old woods of Vesinet — that ill-omened
relic of the ancient forest that covered the Ile de France; and here in the very centre is the star-shaped space called
La Table de la Trahison; here it was that Ganelan de Hauteville planned to betray Roland the Brave and the
twelve peers of France, at Roncevaux; and on the very spot the traitors were burnt to death by the order of
Charlemagne.

Beyond Vesinet rise the fortified heights of Mont Valérien and Montmartre; so we know that the great city of Paris,
with its perpetual noise and bustle, must be the cause of that thickening of the golden air just beyond the rising
ground in the mid-distance. And some one found out — far away again — as far as eye could see, the spire of the
Cathedral of St. Denis, and Irene fell to moralising and comparing. The palace, she said, was ever present — an
every-day fact to the great old kings who had inhabited it — and fertile life and busy pomp were the golden interspace
which all but concealed from them the inevitable grave at St. Denis. But sermons always make me hungry; and Irene’s
moralising seemed to have the same effect on herself as well as on us, or else it was the “nimble” air — for that
epithet of Shakespeare’s exactly fits the clear brisk air of St. Germain. They sat down to sketch, and I was sent in
search of provender.

I could not find a confectioner’s, nor, indeed, would it have been of much use, for French confectioners only sell
sugary or creamy nothings, extremely unsatisfactory to hungry people. So I went boldly into the restaurant to the right
of the station — the Café Galle, I think it was called, — and told the Dame du Comptoir my errand. I was in
hopes that she would have allowed one of the garçons to accompany me with a basket of provisions, and some
plates, and knives and forks; perhaps some glasses, and a bottle of wine. But it seemed that this was against the
rules; and all I could do was, to have the loan of a basket for a short time. Madame split up some oval rolls of
delicious bread, buttered them, and placed some slices of raw ham between the pieces; and with these, and some fresh
strawberries, I returned to my merry, hungry sketchers, who were beginning to find that a seat on the hard gravel was
not quite so agreeable as sitting on (comparatively) soft English turf. Yet the benches were too high for their
purpose. After eating their lunch, they relapsed into silence and hard work.

It was rather dull for me; so I rambled about, struck up an acquaintanceship with one of the gardeners, and with a
hackney-coachman, who tried to tempt me into engaging him for a course to Versailles by Marly-le-Roi — the
Marly, the famous Marly of Louis XIV., of which the faint vestiges alone remain in the marks of the old garden plots. I
was tempted. I remembered what St. Simon says; how the king, weary of noise and grandeur, found out a little narrow
valley within a few miles of his magnificent and sumptuous Versailles; there was a village near this hollow for it
really was nothing more — and this village was called Marly, whence the name of the palace or hermitage which
the king chose to have built. He thought that he went there to lead a simple and primitive life, away from the flattery
of his courtiers. But it is not so easy for a king to avoid flattery. His architect built one great pavilion, which was
to represent the sun; in it dwelt Louis XIV. There were twelve smaller pavilions surrounding this large one; in them
dwelt the planets, that is to say, the favourite courtiers of the time being. Every morning the king set out to visit
his satellites; there were six on one side of the parterre, six on the other; and their pavilions communicated with
each other by means of close avenues of lime-trees. It was etiquette for these courtiers to salute the king, who had
taken the sun for his device, by placing their right hand so as to shade their eyes from his brilliancy; hence, some
people say, our own military salute. Each courtier, as he was visited, followed the king in his round. At first, the
king came to Many only two or three times a year, staying from Wednesday to Saturday; he only brought a comparatively
moderate train; but in time he grew weary of his so-called simplicity, and the surrounding hills were scooped out to
make gardens, and woods, and waterworks; and statues and courtiers thronged the place. Still, as no one could come here
without express invitation from the king, to be of the parties to Marly was an object to be longed for, and asked for,
and intrigued for. Indeed, it was the highest favour that could be obtained from royalty. At the last moment of awful
suspense as to who was to go, the king’s valet de chambre, Bontemps, went round with the invitations. There
was no need of preparation, for in each pavilion there was a store of all things needed for masculine and feminine
toilettes. Only two could inhabit a pavilion; and, if a married lady was asked, her husband was included in the
invitation, though not in the compliment.

But, to the end of his reign, the days for Marly were invariable. Sunday the King spent, as became the eldest son of
the Church, at his parish of Versailles; Monday and Tuesday he allowed himself to be worshipped by the whole court at
Versailles; on Wednesday he went to Marly with the selected few. The amusements at Marly were high play, or, as it
might be called, gambling; and a kind of bazaar, where the ladies dressed themselves up as Syrians; Japanese, Greeks,
what not, and played at keeping shop; the king furnishing the infinite variety of things sold. Louis XV. and his
unfortunate successor went to Marly occasionally; but the great days of Marly were over when Louis XIV. died. After
that, the Governor of St. Germain kept the keys of Marly, and occasionally lent the use of the pavilions to his private
friends. But the Convention did not approve of this appropriation of national property; and the old statues, the
remains of magnificent furniture, the marbles, and the mirrors, were sold for the good of the people. Some one bought
the buildings and turned them into a spinning-mill; but it was not a profitable speculation, and by-and-by the whole
place was pulled down; but I believe you may yet trace out the foundations of the Palace of the Sun. So that was why I
wanted to see Marly — a place once so famous and so populous gone to ruin, nay, the very ruins themselves covered up by
nature with her soft harmony of grass and flowers.

How much would it cost, how long would it take, I asked the hackney-coachman, to go by Marly to Versailles in time
to catch the last train thence to Paris? It would take an hour, not including any stopping at Marly, and it would cost
fifteen francs, also not including any stoppage at Marly. I was vexed at the man for thinking I could be so grossly
imposed upon. Why, two francs an hour, with a decent pourboire, was on the tariff of every carriage; so I
turned. away in silent indignation, heedless of his cries of “Dix francs’, madame. Tenez! huit — cinq — ce — que
vous voulez, madame!”

And immediately afterwards I was glad I had not planned to leave St. Germain an hour earlier than was necessary —
the place looked so bright and cheerful, with all the gaily-dressed people streaming over the Place du Château, to go
to the terrace and hear the band. I went into the restaurant, and ordered coffee to be ready at six, and had a little
more gossip with the Dame du Comptoir. She told me that no one was admitted to see the interior of the castle,
although it was no longer a penitentiary; that the air at St. Germain was better and purer than at any other place
within twenty miles of Paris; and that I ought to come and see the forest of St. Germain at the time of the Fête
des Loges — a sort of open-air festival held in the forest on the 30th of August; and all the waiters at liberty
came forward to make a chorus in praise of the merry-go-rounds, mountebanks, wine, stoves cooking viands, spits turning
joints, and general merriment which seemed to go on at this fair, which took its rise in the pilgrimages made to a
certain hermitage built by a devout seigneur of the time of Louis XIII.

Then I went back to Mary and Irene, and told them my adventures; and we all, attracted by the good music of the
military band, went on to the crowded terrace and leant over the wall, and saw the view I have described, and gazed
down into the green depths of the far-stretching forest, and wondered if we should not have done wiser to have gone
thither and spent our day there. And so to our excellent coffee and bread, and then back to Paris.

II

Chartres, May 10th, 1862.

We were quite worn out with the ever increasing noise of Paris; or, perhaps, I should rather say, as the heat became
greater, so our necessity for open windows by day and by night increased; and the masons opposite rose to their work
with the early morning light. So we determined to go off to Britanny for our few remaining days, having a sort of happy
mixture of the ideas of sea, heath, rocks, ferns, and Madame de Sévigné in our heads. The one and first destined point
in our plans was to see the cathedral at Chartres.

We left Paris about three o’clock, and went past several stations, the names of which reminded us of Madame de
Sévigné’s time — Rambouillet, perhaps, the most of all. The station is some distance from the town of Chartres, which,
like so many French provincial towns, consists of a Place, and a few appendent streets. The magnificent
cathedral stands a little aloof; we left it on one side as we came in an omnibus up to our hotel, which looked on to
the Place. But alas for my hopes of a quiet night! The space before the house is filled with booths —
dancing-booths, acting-booths, wild-beast shows, music-booths, each and all making their own separate and distinct
noises; the “touter” to one booth sitting in front of it and blowing a trumpet as hard as any angel in the old
pictures; the hero of the theatrical booth walking backwards and forwards in front of his stage, and ranting away in
King Cambyses’ vein; the lions and tigers are raging with hunger, to judge from their roars; and the musicians are in
the full burst of the overture to Guillaume Tell. Mary and Irene have gone out, in spite of it all, to have a.
peep at the cathedral before it is too dark; and I have chosen our bed-rooms. If the lion only knew it, he could easily
make a spring into our balcony; but I hope, as he is great, he will be stupid. I have rung the bell, and rung the bell,
and gone cut in the corridor and called; and, at last, I shall have to go downstairs, to try and find some one to bring
up the meal which I have promised the others they shall find ready on their return. I have been and found Madame, and
laid my complaint before her. She says the servants are all gone out to see the shows in the Place, which is very
wicked in them; but I suspect, from her breathless way of speaking, she has only just rushed in herself, to see that I
am not running away with the house. I fancy I am the only person in it. She assures me, with true French volubility,
that she will send up some coffee and bread directly, and will scold Jeanette well.

May 11th. — Mary and Irene returned from the cathedral last night before anything was ready, and
were too full of the extraordinary architectural magnificence they had seen to care about my Martha-like troubles. But
I had not seen the cathedral; and I was hungry if they were not. I went down again, and this time I found Madame in
full tilt against an unfortunate woman, who looked as if she had been captured, vi et armis, out of the
open-air gaiety and the pleasant company of friends in the Place. She brought us up our meal with sullen
speed, giving me occasionally such scowls of anger that I almost grew afraid at the feeling I had provoked. Yet she
refused to be soothed by our little expressions of admiration for the fair, and our questions as to what was to be
seen. Her only attempt at an apology was a sort of grumbling soliloquy, to the effect that ladies who knew what was
comme il faut would never have gone out so late in the evening of a jour de fête to walk about the
town; and that, as Mary and Irene had done this improper thing, there was no knowing when, if ever, they would return.
I wish she had let us try to comfort her, for I really was very sorry to have dragged a poor creature back from what
was, perhaps, the great enjoyment of the year. After our coffee we went to bed; and I am not at all sure if we were
not, for some hours, the only occupants of the hotel. But the lion did not take advantage of his opportunity, though we
were obliged to leave the windows open for the heat. This morning we went to see the cathedral. It is so wonderfully
beautiful that no words can describe it. I am thoroughly glad we came by Chartres.

May 12th. — Vitré. — We came on here yesterday afternoon. Irene, who is the most
wide-awake person I know, sat upright in the railway-carriage, looking out of the window with eager, intelligent eyes,
and noting all she saw. It was a féte day; and at all the little cabarets, with their wayside gardens, there
were groups of peasants in their holiday dress, drinking what appeared to be cider, from its being in large stone
bottles, and eating galette — a sort of fiat cake of puff-paste, dusted over with powdered sugar, with which we had
become well acquainted in Paris. The eating and drinking seemed, however, to be rather an excuse for sitting round
well-scoured tables in the open air, than an object in itself. I sank back in my seat in a lazy, unobservant frame of
mind, when Irene called out, “Oh, look! there is a peasant in the goat-skin dress one reads about; we must be in
Britanny now; look, look!” I had to sit up again and be on the alert; all the time thinking how bad for the brain it
was to be straining one’s attention perpetually after the fast-flitting objects to be seen through a railway carriage
window. This is a very good theory; but it did not quite hold water in practice. Irene was as bright as ever when we
stopped at Vitré; I was tired and stupid. Perhaps the secret was, that I did unwillingly what she did with
pleasure.

The station at Vitré is a little outside the town, and is smart and new and in apple-pie order, as a station on a
line that has to make its character ought to he. The town, on the contrary, is ancient, picturesque, and deserted.
There have been fortified walls all round it, but these are now broken down in many places, and small hovels have been
built of the débris wherever this is the case, giving one the impression of a town stuffed too full, which has
burst its confines and run over. Yet inside the walls there are many empty houses, and many grand fortified dwellings,
with coats of arms emblazoned over the doorway, which are only half-occupied. All the little world of the town seemed
to be at the railway-station, and everybody welcomed us with noise and advice. The inn down in our ten-years-old Murray
no longer existed; so we were glad to be told of the “Hôtel Sévigné,” although we suspected it to be a mere trick of a
name. Not at all. We are really veritably lodged in the very house she occupied, when she left Les Rochers to come and
do the honours of Vitré to the Governor of Britanny — the Duc de Chaulnes. Our hotel is the “Tour de Sévigné” of her
letters. On being told this, I asked for the tower itself. It had been pulled down only a year or two before, in order
to make the great rambling mansion more compact as an hotel. As it was, they had changed the main entrance from hack to
front; and to arrive at it, we had to go over a great piece of vacant irregular ground, the inequalities of which were
caused by the débris of the tower.

The place belongs to the Marquis de Néthumières, a descendant of the de Sévignés, so our host said. At any rate, he
lives at Les Rochers, and owns our hotel. It seems as though our landlord had not had capital enough to furnish the
whole of this immense, far-stretching house, which is entered in the middle of the building with long corridors to the
right and to the left, both upstairs and downstairs — corridors so wide and well-lighted by the numerous windows
looking to the back (or town-side), that they are used as store-rooms and sculleries. Here there are great sacks of
corn and unpacked boxes of possible groceries; there a girl sits and sings as she mends the house-linen by a window,
apparently diligent enough, but perfectly aware, all the time, that the ostler in the yard below is trying to attract
her attention; and there, again, a woman is standing, shoulders square, to an open window, “topping and tailing” a
basket of gooseberries, and shouting out her part of a conversation with some one unseen in the yard below. Yet the
great corridor looks empty and strangely deserted. Somehow, I suppose that as soon as I heard the name of “Tour de
Sévigné,” I expected to see a fair, plump lady, in hanging sleeves and long light-brown ringlets, walking before me
wherever I went, half-turning her pretty profile over her white shoulder to say something bright and playful; and,
instead, we follow our rather spruce landlord into the bedrooms at the end of the corridor, and coolly order our dinner
for this day of May, 1862.

The rooms in this house are not large, but so very lofty, that I suspect that the panelled partition walls are but
later wooden divisions of large? rooms; and so, on tapping, we find to be the case. My window looks out on the country
outside the town; Irene’s is just on the opposite side, and she sees roofs of deeply furrowed tiles — roofs of every
possible angle and shape, but mostly high pitched; they are covered with golden and grey lichens which tone down the
old original red. There are broad gutters round the verge of every one, regular cats’ Pall Malls. And see, there is an
old black grimalkin coming round yonder corner, with meek and sleepy gait, of course entirely unconscious of the flock
of pigeons towards which she is advancing with her velvet steps. They strut and pout and ruffle themselves up, turning
their pretty soft plumage to the sun till they catch the rainbow tints; and whiff — they are all off in mid-air, and
the hypocritical cat has to go on walking in the gutter, as if pigeons had been the last thing in her thoughts when she
made that playful spring round the corner. How picturesque the old town looks beyond, though, to be sure, we see little
besides roofs — the streets must be so narrow! Let us make haste and have our meal, and go out before the sun sets.
Pigeons for dinner! Ah, Pussy, we begin to have a fellow-feeding for you.

May l3th. — We have had a busy day, but a very pleasant one. In the first place, we had a long
talk with our landlord about the possibility of seeing Les Rochers. The Marquis was very strict about not letting it be
shown without his permission, and he and Madame were known to be at Rennes; so we thought of giving it up. Then our
landlord turned round in his opinions, and said that doubtless the Marquis and Madame would be very sorry for any
foreigners to come so far on a bootless errand; and so — after a good many pro’s and con’s, we always following our
landlord’s lead, and agreeing to all that he said, in hopes of getting to the end of the discussion — we made a bargain
for a little conveyance, half Irish car, half market cart, which was to take us to Les Rochers, and to stay there as
long as we liked. Who so merry as we this bright dewy May morning, cramped up in our jolting, rattling carriage, the
fourth place occupied by sketch-books and drawing materials? First, we rattled along the narrow streets of Vitré; the
first floors of the houses are propped up upon black beams of wood, making a rude sort of colonnade, under which people
walk; something like Chester — and then we passed out of the old turretted gate of the town, into the full and pleasant
light of early morning.

We began to climb a hill, the road winding round Vitré, till we peeped down upon the irregular roofs and stacks of
chimneys pent in the circular walls; and we saw the remains of the old castle, inhabited by the Duc and Duchesse de
Chaulnes, in the days when Madame de Sévigné came to stay at the “Tour”, and show hospitality to her Paris friends in
that barbarous region. And now we were on a high level, driving along pretty wooded lanes, with here and there a
country château or manor house, surrounded by orchards on either side of us. Towards one of these our driver pointed.
It was low and gabled; I have seen a hundred such in England. “That is the old house of the De la Trémouilles,” said
he. And then we began to think of a daughter of that house who had been transplanted by marriage into England, and was
known in English history and romance as Charlotte, the heroic Countess of Derby. By this time we had made great friends
with our driver, by admiring his brisk little Breton pony, and asking him various questions about Breton cows. Suddenly
he turned into a field-road on our left; and in three minutes we were in full sight of Les Rochers. We got down, and
looked about us. We were on the narrow side of an oblong of fine delicate grass; on our right were peaked-roof farm
buildings, granaries, barns, stables, and cow-houses; opposite to us, a thick wood, showing dark in the sunlight; in
the corner to our left was the house, with tourelles and towers, and bits of high-roof, and small irregular
doors; a much larger and grander building than I had expected; very like the larger castles in Scotland. Then quite on
our right was the low wall, and ha-ha of the gardens, and the bridge over the ha-ha, and the richly-worked iron gates.
We turned round; we were at the edge of the rising ground which fell rather abruptly from this point into a rich
smiling plain — the Bocage country, in fact. We could see far away for miles and miles, till it all melted into the
blue haze of distance.

Our driver took out his horse, and went to make friends with the farm-servants, who had turned out with lazy
curiosity to look at the strangers. We sat down on the ground; the turf was fine and delicate, and the little flowerets
interspersed were all of such kinds as tell of a lime-soil and of pure air. There were larks up above, right in the
depth of the blue sky, singing as if they would crack their throats for joy; the sort of open farm-yard before us was
full of busy, prosperous poultry of all kinds — hens clucking up their large broods of chickens, cocks triumphantly
summoning their wives to the feast before the barn-door, fussy turkeys strutting and gobbling, and flocks of pigeons,
now basking on the roof, now fluttering down to the ground. There were dogs baying in the unseen background, to add to
the various noises. I never saw a place so suggestive of the ideas of peace and plenty. There were cows, too, tethered
in the dusky shadows of the open cow-houses, with heaps of cut green food before them.

Our plan was to sketch first, and then to try to see the house. Now and then a servant in rather clumsy livery, or a
maid in the country dress of Britanny, went across the space, to have a little talk with the farm-servants, and a
sidelong look at us. At last an old man in a blue blouse came out from the group near the barn door, and slowly
approach mg, sat himself down on a hillock near. Of course we began to talk, seeing his sociable intentions; and he
told us he was a De la Roux, and had relations “in London.” I fancied he might mean the De la Rues, but he corrected my
mis-spelling with some indignation, and again asked me if I did not know his relations in London — the De la Roux. Ah
yes! they were noble, he was noble; his ancestors had been as great as the ancestors of the Marquis yonder, but they
had taken the wrong side in the wars; and here was he, their grandchild, obliged to work for his daily bread. We sighed
out of sympathy with his sighs, and amplified the text, “Sic transit,” &c. Then he offered us a pinch of
snuff, which we took, and sneezed accordingly; and this afforded our old friend much amusement. To wind up this little
story all at once — when we were going away, we demurred as to whether we could venture to offer a De la Roux a couple
of francs, or whether it would not seem like an insult to his noble blood. The wisdom of age carried the day against
the romance of youth, and was justified in seeing the eager eyes in the worn sharp face watching the first initiatory
sign of a forthcoming gift with trembling satisfaction. How pleasant the long quiet morning was! A cloud-shadow passing
over us, a horse coming too near with its loud champing of the sweet herbage, our only disturbance; while before us the
evident leisure for gossip, and signs of plenty to eat, filled up the idea of rural happiness. Then we went and saw the
house, and the portraits, and passed out of the window into the garden — like all French gardens — with neglected
grass, and stone-fountains, and cut yews and cypresses, and a profusion of lovely flowers, roses especially. We were
all very sorry to come away.

Early this evening, Mary and Irene went out to sketch, and planted themselves down in a street already occupied by
picturesque booths and open-air shops for pottery, men’s clothes, and the really serviceable articles for country use.
It seems it was the market-day at Vitré; and it was very pretty to watch the young housewives in their best attire,
bargaining and hesitating over their purchases. Their dress was invariably a gown of some bright coloured cotton, a
handkerchief of the same material, but a different colour, crossed over the breast à la Marie Antoinette, and
a large apron, with a bib of a third hue almost covering the petticoat, and confining and defining the bust. They rung
the changes on turkey-red, bright golden brown, and full dark blue. Indeed, the dark narrow streets, with their
colonnades, black with the coming shadows, needed this relief of colour.

The little boys of Vitré, let loose from school, came clustering round about our sketchers. It was certainly a great
temptation to the lads: but they came too close, and entirely, obstructed the view, and only laughed, at first shyly,
afterwards a little rudely, at my remonstrances. I applied to a gendarme, slowly coming down the street, but
he only shrugged his shoulders with the hopeless beginning of “Que voulez-vous, Madame! I am not here to
impede the concourse of children,” and passed on. Just at this moment a stout woman selling men’s clothes in the open
street close by, observed the dilemma, and came to the rescue. She wielded a pair of good strong fustian trousers, and
scolded in right down earnest — and also in right-down good-humour, casting her weapon about her with considerable
dexterity, so as to make it answer the purpose of a cat-o’-nine-tails. And thus she cleared a circle for us; and
whenever she saw us too much crowded she came again; and the lads laughed, and we laughed, and we all ended capital
friends. By-and-by she began to pack up her stock of clothes: she had a cart brought to her by her husband, and first
she took down the poles of her booth, and then the awning, then the impromptu counter came to pieces, and lastly the
coats and trousers, the blouses and jackets, were packed into great sacks. And she was on the point of departure —
being, as we afterwards heard, a pedlaress who made the circuit of the markets in the district with her wares — when I
thought that the only civility I could offer her was to show her the drawings that Mary and Irene had made, thanks to
her well-timed interposition. She swore many a good round oath to enforce her admiration of the sketches, and called
her little obedient husband to look at them; but, on his failing to recognise some object, she gave him a good cuff on
the ear, apologising to us for his stupidity. I do not think he liked her a bit the less for this conduct.

May 4th. — We have decided to return to England to see the Exhibition. We are going by Fougères,
Pont Orson, Mont St. Michel, Avranches, Caen, and Rouen; and by that time we shall have made an agreeable “loop” of a
little journey full of objects of interest.

* * * * * * *

February 16th, 1863. — Again in Paris! and, as I remember a young English girl saying with great
delight, “we need never be an evening at home!” But her visions were of balls; our possibilities are the very pleasant
ones of being allowed to go in on certain evenings of the week to the houses of different friends, sure to find them at
home ready to welcome any who may come in. Thus, on Mondays, Madame de Circourt receives; Tuesdays, Madame —;
Wednesdays, Madame de M—; Thursdays, Monsieur G — and so on. There is no preparation of entertainment; a few more
lights, perhaps a Baba, or cake savouring strongly of rum, and a little more tea is provided. Every one is welcome, and
no one is expected. The visitors may come dressed just as they would be at home; or in full toilette, on their way to
balls and other gaieties. They go without any formal farewell; whence, I suppose, our expression “French leave.”

Of course the agreeableness of these informal receptions depends on many varying circumstances, and I doubt if they
would answer in England. A certain talent is required in the hostess; and this talent is not kindness of heart, or
courtesy, or wit, or cleverness, but that wonderful union of all these qualities, with a dash of intuition besides,
which we call tact. Madame Récamier had it in perfection. Her wit or cleverness was of the passive or receptive order;
she appreciated much, and originated little. But she had the sixth sense, which taught her when to speak, and when to
be silent. She drew out other people’s powers by her judicious interest in what they said; she came in with sweet words
before the shadow of a coming discord was perceived. It could not have been all art; it certainly was not all nature.
As I have said, invitations are not given for these evenings. Madame receives on Tuesdays. Any one may go. But there
are temptations for special persons which can be skilfully thrown out. You may say in the hearing of one whom you wish
to attract, “I expect M. Guizot will be with us on Tuesday; he is just come back to Paris,” — and the bait is pretty
sure to take: and of course you can vary your fly with your fish. Yet, in spite of all experience and all chances, some
houses are invariably dull. The people who would be dreary at home, go to be dreary there. The gay, bright spirits are
always elsewhere; or perhaps come in, make their bows to the hostess, glance round the room, and quietly vanish. I
cannot make out why this is; but so it is.

But a delightful reception, which will never take place again — a more than charming hostess, whose virtues, which
were the real source of her charms, have ere this “been planted in our Lord’s garden” — awaited us to-night. In this
one case I must be allowed to chronicle a name — that of Madame de Circourt — so well known, so fondly loved, and so
deeply respected. Of her accomplished husband, still among us, I will for that reason say nothing, excepting that it
was, to all appearances, the most happy and congenial marriage I have ever seen. Madame de Circourt was a Russian by
birth, and possessed that gift for languages which is almost a national possession. This was the immediate means of her
obtaining the strong regard and steady friendship of so many distinguished men and women of different countries. You
will find her mentioned as a dear and valued friend in several memoirs of the great men of the time. I have heard an
observant Englishman, well qualified to speak, say she was the cleverest woman he ever knew. And I have also heard one,
who is a saint for goodness, speak of Madame de Circourt’s piety and benevolence and tender kindness, as unequalled
among any women she had ever known. I think it is Dekker who speaks of our Saviour as “the first true gentleman that
ever lived.” We may choose to be shocked at the freedom of expression used by the old dramatist: but is it not true? Is
not Christianity the very core of the heart of all gracious courtesy? I am sure it was so with Madame de Circourt.
There never was a house where the weak and dull and humble got such kind and unobtrusive attention, or felt so happy
and at home. There never was a place that I heard of, where learning and genius and worth were more truly appreciated,
and felt more sure of being understood. I have said that I will not speak of the living; but of course every one must
perceive that this state could not have existed without the realisation of the old epitaph —

They were so one, it never could be said

Which of them ruled, and which of them obeyed.

There was between them but this one dispute,

’Twas which the other’s will should execute.

In the prime of life, in the midst of her healthy relish for all social and intellectual pleasures, Madame de
Circourt met with a terrible accident; her dress caught fire, she was fearfully burnt, lingered long and long on a
sick-bed, and only arose from it with nerves and constitution shattered for life. Such a trial was enough, both
mentally and physically, to cause that form of egotism which too often takes possession of chronic invalids, and which
depresses not only their spirits, but the spirits of all who come near them. Madame de Circourt was none of these
folks. Her sweet smile was perhaps a shade less bright; but it was quite as ready. She could not go about to serve
those who needed her; but, unable to move without much assistance, she sat at her writing-table, thinking and working
for others still. She could never again seek out the shy or the slow or the awkward; but, with a pretty beckoning
movement of her hand, she could draw them near her, and make them happy with her gentle sensible words. She would no
more be seen in gay brilliant society; but she had a very active sympathy with the young and the joyful who mingled in
it; could plan their dresses for them; would take pains to obtain a supply of pleasant partners at a ball to which a
young foreigner was going; and only two or three days before her unexpected death — for she had suffered patiently for
so long that no one knew how near the end was — she took much pains to give a great pleasure to a young girl of whom
she knew very little, but who, I trust, will never forget her.

I could not help interrupting the course of my diary to pay this tribute to Madame de Circourt’s memory. At the end
of February, 1563, many were startled with a sudden pang of grief. “Have you heard? Madame de Circourt is dead!” “Dead!
— why, we were at her house not a week ago!” “And I had a note from her only two days ago, about a poor woman,” &c.
And then the cry was “Oh, her poor husband! who has lived but for her, who has watched over her so constantly!

We were at her house not a fortnight before, and met the pretty gay people all dressed out for a Carnival ball at
the Russian Embassy. The whole thing looked unreal. They came and showed themselves in their brilliant costumes,
exchanged a witticism or a compliment, and then flitted away to exhibit themselves elsewhere, and left the room to a
few quiet, middle-aged, or quieter people. A lady was introduced to me, whose name I recognised, although I could not
at the moment remember where I had heard it before. She looked, as she was, a French Marquise. I forget how much her
dress was in full costume, but she had much the air of a picture of the date of Louis XV.

After she was gone, I recollected where I had heard the name. She was the present lady of Les Rochers, whose ancient
manor-house we had visited in Britanny the year before. Instead of a Parisian drawing-room, full of scented air,
brilliant with light, through which the gay company of high-born revellers had just passed, the bluff of land
overlooking the Bocage rose before me; the short sweet turf on which we lay fragrant with delicate flowers; the
grey-turretted manor-house, with here and there a faint yellow splash of colour on the lichen-tinted walls; the pigeons
wheeling in the air above the high dove-cot; the country-servants in their loosely-fitting, much-belaced liveries; and
old De la Roux in his blouse, shambling around us, with his horn snuff-box and story of ancestral grandeur. I told M.
de Circourt of our visit to Britanny, and in return he gave me the following curious anecdote:— An uncle of his was the
General commanding the Western district of France in or about 1816. He had a Montmorenci for his aide-de-camp; and on
one of his tours of inspection the General and aide were guests at Lee Rochers. They were to have left their hospitable
quarters the next day; but in the morning the General said to M. de Montmorenci that their host had pressed him to
remain there another night, which he found, on inquiry, would be perfectly convenient for his plans, and therefore he
had determined to accept the invitation. M. de Montmorenci, however, to the General’s surprise, begged to be allowed to
go and sleep at Vitré; and, on the General’s inquiring what ebuld be his reason for making such a request, he said that
he had not been properly lodged; that the bedroom assigned to him was not one befitting a Moutmorenci. “How so?” said
the General. “Did they put you in a garret? Bachelors have often to put up with rough quarters when a house is full of
visitors.” “No, sir; I was on the ground-floor. My room was spacious and good enough; but it was that which had once
belonged to Madame de Sévigné.”

M. de Montmorenci after he had said this, looked as though he had given a full explanation; but the General was
rather more perplexed than before.

“Well! and why should you object to sleeping in the room which once belonged to Madame Sévigné? From all accounts
she was a very pretty, charming woman: and certainly she wrote delightful letters.”

“Pardon me, sir; but it appears to me that you forget that Madame de Sévigné was a Jansenist, and that I am a
Montmorenci, of the family of the first Baron of Christendom.”

The young man was afraid of the contamination of heresy that might be lingering in the air of the room. There are
old rooms in certain houses shut up since the days of the Great Plague, which are not to be opened for the world. I
hope that certain Fellows’ rooms in Balliol may be hermetically sealed, when their present occupants leave them, lest a
worse thing than the plague may infect the place.

February 21st. — All this evening I have been listening to fragmentary recollections of the Reign
of Terror, told us by two ladies of high distinction. One of them said that her remembrances of that time would have a
peculiar value, as she was then only a child of five or six years of age; and could not have attempted at that age to
join her fragments together by any theory, however wild and improbable. She could simply recall what struck on her
senses as extraordinary and unprecedented. I think the first thing she named was her indignation at seeing her mother
assume a servant’s dress, as she then thought. Evidently it had been considered advisable that Madame de — should set
aside all outward sign of superior rank or riches, and put on the clothes of what we should now call a
“working-woman.”

The next thing my friend remembered was the temporary absence of her father; who must have been arrested on
suspicion, and, strange to say, in those days, released, but kept under strict surveillance. During his absence from
home all the servants were dismissed, excepting the child’s bonne. They lived in an apartment in the Place
Vendôme, and there was grass in the centre of the Place; what we, in England, should call a “green,” I should
imagine. When her father returned home two men came with him. They were “citizens” told off to keep a watch upon M. de
—’s movements. The little girl looked upon them as rude, vulgar men (she was a true little aristocrat, in fact), and
wondered and chafed at her mother’s trembling civility to these two fellows. They sat in the drawing-room, lolled in
the best satin-cushioned chairs, smoked their pipes; and the dainty mother never upbraided them! It was very
inexplicable. Madame cooked the family dinner; and probably did not do it remarkably well, even though she was a
Frenchwoman. One day, one of the two citizen-guards, finding the idleness of his life in the drawing-room wearisome, or
seized with a fit of good-nature, offered to turn cook. I think it was imagined he had been a cook somewhere under the
old régime. And, after he had found for himself this congenial appointment, his fellow-guard offered to knit
stockings for the family, and to sit in the salle-à-manger, through which every one going in or out of the
salon must pass. Either he or the cook left whatever they were about to accompany Monsieur le Suspect whenever
he made any signs of wanting to go out. But altogether, and considering the office they held, they were not disobliging
inmates, after the first jealousy of neglect was soothed.

Another circumstance which Madame de — had observed was her mother’s silence and depression of spirits at a
particular hour. As sure as eleven o’clock drew near, the poor lady ceased talking to her little girl, and listened.
Then by-and-by came a horrid heavy rumble in the distant streets; clearer and clearer it sounded, advancing slowly,
then turning, and dying away into a sudden stop. This ominous noise was the more recognisable because of the general
silence of Paris streets at that time. The carriage of the Prosecutor General, Fouquier-Tinville, was the only one that
rolled about pretty much as it did in former years; any other was put down for fear lest it might be considered a mark
of “aristocracy.” But the diurnal heavy sound, at which the poor lady grew pale and crossed herself and prayed, was the
Charrette, with its daily tale of forty or fifty victims, going to the Place Louis XV. From the Place Vendôme
a sort of lane between two dead walls led down to the gardens of the Tuileries. These walls bounded the respective
gardens of the convents of the Feuillants, and the Jacobins, which gave their names to the different political parties
that met in the deserted buildings. Indeed, the iron gate leading into the Tuileries Gardens opposite to the end of the
Rue Castiglione is still called the Porte des Feuillants. Along this dreary walled-in lane Madame de — was taken by her
bonne for a daily walk in the Palace Gardens. I asked her how it was that her parents, in sending their child
for her exercise into these Gardens, did riot dread the chance of her being shocked by the sights and sounds in the
adjoining Place Louis XV. She replied that in those days there was a row of irregular, unshapely buildings at the
further end of the Gardens, completely shutting out the Place. Every one about the court who fancied that the
erection of any edifice would add to his convenience ordered it to be built at the end of the Gardens, at the national
expense; and thus there was a very sufficient screen between the Gardens and the Place. Besides, added her
friend, Madame de St. A — it was terrible to think how soon people are familiarised with horror; terrible in one sense
— merciful in another; for elsewise how could persons have kept their senses in those days? She said that her husband,
M. de St. A — when a boy of ten or twelve, was only saved from being shut up with his parents and all the rest of his
family in the Abbaye by the faithful courage of an old servant, who carried the little fellow off to his garret in the
Faubourg St. Antoine. Of course this was done at the risk of the man’s life, harbouring a suspected aristocrat being
almost as criminal as being an aristocrat yourself. The little lad pined in the necessary confinement of his refuge;
the close air, the difference of food, the anxiety about his father and mother, all told upon his health; and the man,
his protector, seeing this, began to cast about him for some amusement and relaxation for the boy. So once a week he
took the boy, well disguised, out for a walk. Where to, do you think? To the Place Louis XV., to see the guillotine at
work on the forty or fifty victims! The delicate little boy shrank and sickened at the sight; yet tried to conquer all
signs of his terror and loathing, partly out of regard to the man who had run so much risk in saving him, partly out of
an instinctive consciousness that in those times of excitement, and among that impulsive race, his very friend and
protector might have a sudden irritation against him, if he saw the boy’s repugnance to the fearful exhibition, and
might there and then denounce him as a little enemy to the public safety.

And again, and also to mark the apathy as to life, and the wild excitement which people took in witnessing the
deadly terror and sufferings of others, Madame de St. A— went on to say that her husband’s family, to the number of
six, were imprisoned in the Abbaye, and made part of that strange sad company who lived there, and resigned themselves
to their fate by keeping up that mockery of the society they had enjoyed in happier days: visiting each other, carrying
on amusements and etiquette with dignity and composure; and, when the day’s list of victims was read out by the gaoler,
bidding farewell to those who still bided their time with quiet dignity and composure. One morning the gaoler’s
daughter, a bonny, good-tempered girl of fourteen or fifteen, who was a favourite with all that sad company, came
instead of her father to read out the list of those for whom at that very minute the tumbril was waiting outside the
gate. Every one of the six members of the St. A— family were named. It was well; no one would remain in bitter solitude
awaiting their day. One after another rose up, and bade the remaining company their solemn, quiet farewell, and
followed the girl out of the door into the corridor, through another door, and then she stopped; she had not the key of
the next. She turned round and laughed at those who were following her, with the glee of one who had performed a
capital practical joke. “Have not you all been well taken in? Was it not a good trick? Look! it is only a blank sheet
of paper. The list has not come yet. You may all go back again!” And their names, by some good fortune, were never
placed on the lists; and the death of Robespierre set them free.

The conversation then turned upon the marvel it was now to think upon the immunity which Robespierre seemed to enjoy
from all chances of assassination. There was no appearance of precaution in either his dress or his movements. His
hours of going out and coming in were punctiliously regular; his methodical habits known to any one who cared to
inquire. At a certain time of day he might be seen by crowds issuing forth from his house in the Rue St. Honoré,
dressed with the utmost nicety, neither hurried in gait, nor casting any suspicious glances around him. His secretary,
so said my friends, was alive not more than twenty years ago; living in an apartment in the Quartier Latin, which he
seldom left for any purpose. He had managed to avoid all public notice at the time of his master’s death; and, long
after most of those were dead who might have recognised him, the old man lived on in the seclusion of his rooms;
maintaining to the few who cared to visit him his belief that Robespierre was a conscientious, if a mistaken, man. Then
my friend Madame de — took up the tale of her childish remembrances, and told us that the next thing she remembered
clearly was her terror when one day, being at the window, she saw a wild mob come dancing and raging, shouting,
laughing, and yelling into the Place Vendôme, with red nightcaps on their heads, their shirtsleeves stripped up above
the elbows, their hands and arms discoloured and red. Her mother, shuddering, drew the child away before she saw more;
and the two cowered together in the farther corner of the room till the infernal din died away in the distance. The
following summer, or so she thought it was — it was hot, bright weather at any rat — some order was given, or terrific
hint whispered — she knew not which; but her parents and all the inhabitants of the houses in the Place had
their tables spread in the open air, and took their meals al fresco, joined at pleasure by any of the
Carmagnoles who chanced to be passing by, dressed much as those whom I have just mentioned as having so terrified the
little girl and her mother. This enforced hospitality was considered a mark of good citizenship; and woe to those who
shrank from such companionship at their board!

March 1st. — To-night, at home, the conversation turned upon English and French marriages. As
several Frenchmen of note who had married English wives were present (and one especially, whose mother also was
English, and who can use either tongue with equal eloquence), the discussion was based on tolerably correct knowledge.
Most of those present objected strongly to the English way of bringing up the daughters of wealthy houses in all the
luxurious habits of their fathers’ homes. Their riding-horses, their maids, their affluence of amusement; when, if the
question of marriage arose — say to a young man of equal birth and education, but who had his way to make in the world
— the father of the young lady could rarely pay any money down. It was even doubtful if he could make her an annual
allowance; hardly ever one commensurate with the style in which she had been accustomed to live. In all probability a
younger child’s portion would be hers when her father died; when either the two lovers had given up all thoughts of
uniting their fates, or when perhaps they no longer needed it, having had force of character enough to face poverty
together, and had won their way upwards to competence. The tardy five or ten thousand pounds would have been invaluable
once, that comes too late to many a one; so they said. They added that the luxurious habits of English girls, and the
want of due provision for them on the part of their fathers, made both children and parents anxious and worldly in the
matter of wedlock. The girls knew that, as soon as their fathers died, they must quit their splendid houses, and give
up many of those habits and ways which had become necessary to them; and their parents knew this likewise; and hence
the unwomanly search for rich husbands on the part of the mothers and daughters, which, as they declared, existed in
England.

Now, said our French friends, look at a household in our country; in every rank it is the custom to begin to put by
a marriage portion for a girl as soon as she is born. A father would think he was neglecting a duty, if he failed to do
this, just as much as if he starved the little creature. Our girls are brought up simply; luxury and extravagance with
us belong to the married women. When his daughter is eighteen or twenty, a good father begins to look about him, and
inquire the characters of the different young men of his acquaintance. He observes them, or his wife does so still more
efficiently; and, when they have settled that such a youth will suit their daughter, they name the portion they can
give their child to the young man’s father or to some common friend. In reply, they are possibly informed that Monsieur
Alphonse’s education has cost so much; that he is now an avocat in a fair way to earn a considerable income,
but at present unable to marry, unless the young lady can contribute her share, not merely her pin-money, but a
bonâ-fide share, towards the joint expenses of housekeeping. Or he is a son of a man of property — property
somewhat involved at present; but, could it he released from embarrassment by the payment of an immediate sum of money,
his father would settle a certain present income upon the young people; and so on. My friends said that there was no
doubt whatever that if, after these preliminary matters of business were arranged, either the young man or the girl did
not entirely like each other on more intimate acquaintance, the proposed marriage would fall through in the majority of
French families, and no undue influence would be employed to compel either party into what they disliked. But, in
general, the girl has never been allowed to be on intimate terms with any one, till her parents’ choice steps forward
and is allowed by them to court her notice. And as for the young fellow, it has been easy for him to see enough of the
young lady to know whether he can fancy her or not, before it comes to the point when it is necessary that he should
take any individually active steps in the affair.

III

Paris, March 2nd, 1663.

Staying here in a French family, I get glimpses of life for which I am not prepared by any previous reading of
French romances, or even by former visits to Paris, when I remained in an hotel frequented by English, and close to the
street which seems to belong almost exclusively to them. The prevalent English idea of French society is that it is
very brilliant, thoughtless, and dissipated; that family life and domestic affections are almost unknown, and that the
sense of religion is confined to mere formalities. Now I will give you two glimpses which I have had: one into the more
serious side of Protestant, the other into the under-current of Roman Catholic life. The friend with whom I am staying
belongs to a Dizaine, that is to say, she is one of ten Protestant ladies, who group themselves into this
number in order to meet together at regular intervals of time, and bring before each other’s consideration any eases of
distress they may have met with. There are numbers of these Dizaines in Paris; and now as to what I saw of the
working of this plan. One of their principles is to give as little money as possible in the shape of “raw material,”
but to husband their resources, so as to provide employment by small outlays of capital in such cases as they find on
inquiry to prove deserving. Thus women of very moderate incomes find it perfectly agreeable to belong to the same
Dizaine as the richest lady in the Faubourg St. Germain. But what all are expected to render is personal
service of some kind; and in these services people of various degrees of health and strength can join: the invalid who
cannot walk far, or even she who is principally confined to the sofa, can think and plan and write letters; the strong
can walk, and use bodily exertion. They try to raise the condition of one or two families at a time — to raise their
condition into self-supporting independence.

For instance, the Dizaine I am acquainted with had brought. before their notice the case of a sick
shoemaker, and found him, upon inquiry, living in a room on the fifth floor of one of those high, dark, unclean houses
which lie behind the eastern end of the Rue Jacob. Up the noisome, filthy staircase, — badly-lighted and frequented by
most disreputable people — to the close, squalid room in which the man lay bed-ridden, did the visitors from the
Dizaine toil. He was irritable and savage. I think the English poor are generally depressed and sullen under
starvation and neglect; but the French are too apt to become fierce even to those who would fain help them; or it might
be illness in the case of this man. His wife was a poor patient creature, whose spirit and intelligence seemed pressed
out of her by extreme sorrow, and who had neither strength of mind nor body to enable her to make more of an effort
than to let one of the Dizaine know of the case. There were children, too, scrofulous from bad air and poor
living. The medical men say, that the diseases arising from this insidious taint are much more common in Paris than in
London.

Well, this case was grave matter of consideration for the Dizaine; and the end of the deliberation was
this: — One lady undertook to go and seek out a lodging in the same quarter as that in which the shoemaker lived at
present, but with more air, more light, and a cleaner, sweeter approach. It was a bad neighbourhood, but it was that in
which the family had taken root; and it would have occasioned too great a wrench from all their previous habits and few
precious affections, to pull them up by force, and transplant them to an entirely different soil. Another lady
undertook to seek out among her acquaintance for a subscriber to a certain sea-bathing charity at Dieppe, who could
give an order to the poor little boy who was the worst victim to scrofula. An invalid said that, while awaiting this
order, she would see that some old clothes of her own prosperous child should he altered and arranged, so that the
little cripple should go to Dieppe decently provided. Some one knew a leather merchant, and spoke of getting a small
stock of leather at wholesale prices; while all these ladies declared they would give some employment to the shoemaker
himself; and I know that they — great ladles as one or two of them were — toiled up the noisome staircase, and put
their delicate little feet up on to the bed where he lay, in order to give him the cheerful comfort of employment
again. I suppose this was disturbing the regular course of labour; but I do not fancy that cases of this kind are so
common as to affect greatly the more prosperous tradespeople. The last I heard of this shoemaker was, that he was in a
(comparatively) healthy lodging; his wife more cheerful, he himself slightly sarcastic instead of positively fierce,
and, though still bed-ridden, managing to earn a tolerable livelihood by making shoes to be sold ready-made in the
American market; a piece of permanent employment procured for him through the instrumentality of the
Dizaine.

Of course these ladies, being human, have their foibles and faults. Their meetings are apt to become gossipy, and
they require the firm handling of some superior woman to keep them to the subject and business in hand. Occasional
bickerings as to the best way of managing a case, or as to the case most deserving of immediate assistance, will occur;
and may be blamed or ridiculed by those who choose rather to see blemishes in execution than to feel righteousness of
design. The worst that can be said is, that Dizaines (like all ladies’ committees I ever knew) are the better
for having one or two men amongst them. And some of them at least are most happy and fortunate in being able to refer
for counsel and advice to M. Jules Simon, whose deep study of the condition of the workwoman (l’ouvriére) in
France, and the best remedies to he applied to her besetting evils — whose general, wise, and loving knowledge of the
life of the labouring classes — empower him to judge wisely on the various cases submitted to him.

Now as to my glimpse into Roman Catholic wisdom and goodness in Paris. Not long ago — it is probably still going on
— there was a regular service held in the crypt under St. Sulpice for very poor workmen, immediately after the grand
(high) mass. It was almost what we should call a “ragged church.” They listened to no regular sermon on abstract
virtues; but among them stood the priest, with his crucifix, speaking to them in their own homely daily language —
speaking of brotherly love, of self-sacrifice, like that of which he held the symbol in his hands — of the temptations
to which they were exposed in their various trades and daily lives, using even the technical words, so that every man
felt as if his own individual soul was being entreated. And by-and-by there was a quête for those still
poorer, still more helpless and desolate than themselves; many of them of course could not give even the sons, or the
five-centime piece. But after that the priest went round, speaking low and softly to each individual, and asking each
what effort, what sacrifice he could make “in the name of the Lord.” One said, he could sit up with a sick neighbour
who needed watching in the night; another offered a day’s wages for the keep of the family of the incapacitated man;
the priest suggested to a third that he and his wife might take one of the noisy little children to play among their
own children for the day; another offered to carry out the weekly burden of a poor widow. One could not hear all; it
was better that such words should be spoken low; that the left hand should not know what the right hand did. But the
priests seemed always ready with little suggestions which nothing but an intimate acquaintance with the lives of these
poor men could have enabled them to give.

We are talking of leaving Paris, and going leisurely on to Rome. M. de Montalembert was here last night, and wrote
me down a little détour which he said we could easily make, rejoining the railroad at Dijon.

March 5th. Avignon. — After all we were not able to follow out M. de Montalembert’s
instructions, but I shall keep his paper (written in English), as ‘the places he desired us to visit sound full of
interest, and would make a very pleasant week’s excursion from Paris at some future time.

“Provide yourself with Ed. Joanne’s Guide du Voyageur. Est-et-Mur.

“By the Lyons railway to Auxerre (a beautiful city with splendid churches).

“At Auxerre take the diligence (very bad) to Avallon, a very pretty place with fine churches. At Avallon hire a
vehicle of some sort to Vezelay, only three leagues off; the most splendid Romanesque church in Europe; and to
Chastellux, a fine old castle belonging to the family of that name, from the Crusade of 1147. Returning to Avallon,
there is a very bad coach to Sémur, another very pretty place, with a delightful church; seven or eight leagues off.
From Sémur by omnibus to Montbard, or Les Launes, which are both railroad stations. Stop at Dijon, a most interesting
city, and be sure you see the museum.

When M. de Montalembert wrote out his little plan, I said something about the name “Avallon,” “the Isle of Avallon”
being in France, instead of Bretagne; but he reminded me of the fact that the fragments of the Arthurian romances were
to be found in one shape or another all over the west of Europe, and claimed Avallon as the place

Where fails not hail, or rain, or any snow,

Nor ever wind blows loudly but it lies

Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns,

And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.

He said that there is also a Morvan, a Forèt de Morvan, in the same district. Speaking of the Crusades (àpropos of
the family of de Chastellux, alluded to in the sketch of a possible journey which he had drawn out for us), the company
present fell to talking about the rapid disappearance of old French families within the last twenty or thirty years;
during which time the value for “long pedigrees” has greatly increased after the fifty years of comparative
indifference in which they were held. The five Salles des Croisades, at Versailles were appropriated to the
commemoration of the events from which they take their names, by Louis-Philippe, in 1837; previously to which the right
of the hundred and ninety-three families that claim to be directly descended from the Crusaders who went on the three
first Crusades (from 1106 to 1191 A.D.) was thoroughly examined into, and scrutinized by heralds and savants
and lawyers acquainted with the difficulty of establishing descent, before the proud hundred and ninety-three could
have their arms emblazoned in the first Salles des Croisades. Among them rank de Chastellux, de Biron, de
Lamballe, de Guérin (any ancestor of Eugénie de Guérin, I wonder?) de la Guéche de Rohan, de La Rochefoucauld, de
Montalembert, &c. And now in 1864 not two-thirds of these families exist in the direct male line! Yet such has
become the value affixed to these old historical titles and names, that they are claimed by collateral relations, by
descendants in the female line — nay, even by the purchasers of the lands from which the old Crusaders derived the
appellations; and it has even become necessary to have an authorised court to judge of the rights of those who assume
new titles and designations. The Montmorencis, indeed, to this day hold a kind of “parliament” of their own, and pluck
off the plumage of any jay who dares to assume their name and armorial bearings. There is apparently no power of
becoming a “Norfolk Howard” at will in France. They spoke as if our English nobility was a very modern race in
comparison with the French; but assigned the palm of antiquity to the great old Belgian families, even in preference to
the Austrians, so vain of their many quarterings.

We could not manage to go by Avallon and Dijon, and so we came straight on here, and are spending a few days in this
charming inn; the mistral howling and whistling without, till we get the idea that the great leafless acacia
close to the windows of our salon has been convulsed into its present twisted form by the agony it must have
suffered in its youth from the cruel sharpness of this wind. But, inside, we are in a lofty salon, looking
into the picturesque inn yard, sheltered by a folding screen from the knife-like draught of the door; a fire heaped up
with blazing logs, resting on brass and irons; skins of wild beasts making the floor soft and warm for our feet; old
military plans, and bird’s — eye views of Avignon, as it was two hundred years ago, hanging upon the walls, which are
covered with an Indian paper; Eugénie de Guérin to read; and we do not care for the mistral, and are
well content to be in our present quarters for a few days.

March 8th. — It was all very well to huddle ourselves up in in-doors comfort for a day or two;
but, after that, we longed to go out in spite of the terrible mistral. We certainly found Avignon “cum
vento fastidioso;” and began to wish that we had delayed our progress by stopping at Avallon, if that indeed was
the place “where never wind blows loudly.” So on the day but one after our arrival here, we happed and wrapped
ourselves up tightly and well, and sailed out of the court-yard. We were taken and seized in a moment by the tyrant;
all we could do was to shut our eyes, and keep our ground, and wonder where our petticoats were. Going across the
bridge was impossible; even the passers-by warned us against the attempt; but, after we had caught our breath again, we
turned and went slowly up the narrow streets, choosing those that offered us the most shelter, until we had reached the
wide space in front of the Palace of the Popes. With slow perseverance we made our way from point to point, and at
length came to a corner in the massive walls where we could rest and look about us. Up above our heads rose the
enormous walls — the far-extending shadow of Rome; for never did the French build such a mighty structure; it seemed
like a growth of the solid rock itself. The prettiness of the garden round the base of the Palace looked to us mean and
out of place, with its tidy flower-beds and low shrubs. All entrance to the Palace was forbidden; it is now a
prison.

We went into the cathedral, and the calm atmosphere was so soothing and delightful, that we were inclined to stop
there till the mistral had ceased blowing; but, as that might not be for a month or six weeks, on second thoughts we
believed it would be better to return to our hotel. We stood for a few minutes on the cathedral-steps, looking at the
magnificent view before us, and only regretting the clouds of fine dust, which from time to time were whirled over the
landscape. Close to us rose the colossal walls of the Palace; before us, in the centre of the open space, there was a
bronze statue of a man dressed in Eastern robes; and we asked whom it represented — what saint? what martyr? It was
that of the Persian Jean Althen, the Persian who first introduced the culture of madder into the South of France. His
father had held high office under Thomas Koulikhan, but was involved in the fall of his master, and his son fled for
protection to the French Consul of Smyrna. It was forbidden under penalty of death to carry the seed of the
madder-plant out of the district; but Althen managed to bring some of it to Marseilles, and thus originated the
cultivation of madder in le Comtat; the profits of which to the inhabitants may he imagined from the fact that the
revenue from this source in one department alone (Vaucluse) amounts annually to more than fifteen millions of francs.
Althen and his daughter died in poverty; but of late years the statue which we saw in the Place Rocher des Doms, has
been erected to the Persian unbeliever, right opposite to the cathedral and the Palace of the Popes — where once John
XXII. (that most infamous believer) lived. I had often seen madder in England, in the shape of a dirty brown powder —
the roots ground down; it has a sweetish taste, and the workmen in calico print-works will not unfrequently take a
little in their hands as they pass the large bales, and put it into their mouths. I had heard a young English
philanthropist say that he had often entertained thoughts of buying a tract of land in Eastern Italy, and introducing
the cultivation of madder there, as a means of raising the condition of the people; but I had never heard of Jean
Althen before, and, tempestuous as it was, I made my way up to the statue, so that I could look up at the calm, sad
face of the poor Persian. I suppose the newly discovered Aniline dyes may uproot the commerce he established, at some
future period; but he did a good work in his day, of which no man knew the value while he lived. Our kind landlady at
the Hôtel de l’Europe was at the hall-door to greet us on our return, and warned us with some anxiety against going out
in the mistral; we were not acclimatised, she said; the English families resident in Avignon did not suffer,
because they had been there so long. Of course we asked questions as to these English families, and heard that some had
resided in the city for two or three generations; all engaged in the commerce de la garance; so they too had
cause to Hess the memory of Jean Althen.

March 12th. — I suppose our landlady thought she would keep us prudent and patient indoors, until
we receive the telegram from Marseilles announcing that it is safe for the boats to Civita Vecchia to start — hitherto
they have been delayed by this horrid mistral — for she has brought us in a good number of books, most of them
topographical, but one or two relating to the legends or history of the district. We are very content to be in the
house to-day; the wind is blowing worse than ever; Irene has a bad pain in her side, which we suppose must be a local
complaint; for, after trying to cure it by mustard plaisters, she sent our maid out at last to get a blister of a
particular size, but without naming what part required the application; and the druggist immediately said, “Ah, for the
side! it will last while the mistral lasts; or till she leaves Avignon!” We are learning how to manage
wood-fires; the man who waits upon us, and is chambermaid as well as footman, gave us a little lesson yesterday. Always
rake the living ashes to the front, and lay on the fresh wood behind; those are his directions, and hitherto they have
answered well. This old man is a Pole, and came, an exile, to be a servant in the hotel about thirty years ago. He
likes talking to us; but his language is very difficult to understand, though we can quite make out the soft, satiny
patois of the South of France, the Provençal dialect, in which our’ questions are answered in the streets.

To-night he has brought in our lamp and cleared away our thé simple. Mary is sitting by the fire, tempted
sorely by the wood logs; for every stroke of the sharp, thin poker brings out springing fountains of lovely sparkles.
I, having a frugal mind, exclaim at her; for we pay heavily for our basketful of wood; but she, in a pleading, coaxing
way, calls my attention to the brilliant effect of her work, and I cannot help watching the bright little lives which
one by one vanish, till at length. a poor solitary spark runs about vainly to find its companions, and then dies out
itself. It reminds me of a story I heard long ago in Ramsay, in the Isle of Man; — and here I think of it at Avignon!
We were questioning a fisherman’s wife at Ramsay about the Manthe Doog of Peel Castle, in which she had a firm belief;
and from this talk we passed on to fairies. “Are there any in the island now?” I asked, gravely, of course, for it was
a grave and serious subject with her. “None now; none now,” she replied. “My brother saw the last that ever was in the
island. He was making a short cut in the hills above Kirk Maughold, and came down on a green hollow, such as there are
on the hill-tops, just green all round, and the blue sky above, and as still as still can be, but for the larks. He
heard the larks singing up above; but this time he heard a little piping cry out of the ground; so he looked about him
everywhere, and followed the sound of the cry; and at length he came to a dip in the grass, and there lay a fairy ever
so weak and small, crying sadly. ‘Oh!’ she said, when she saw him, ‘you are none of my own people; I thought perhaps
they had come hack for me: but they’ve left me here alone, and all gone away, and I am faint and weak, and could not go
with them;’ and she began to cry again. So he meant it well, and he thought he’d carry her home to be a plaything to
his children; it would have been better than lying there playing alone in the damp grass: so he tried to catch her; but
somehow — he had big hands, had my brother, and an awkward horny way of holding things; and fairies is as tickle to
handle as butterflies; and when he had caught her, and she lay very still, he thought he might open his hand after a
time, and tell her he was doing it all for her good; but she was just crushed to death, poor thing! So, as he said,
there was no use bringing her home in that state; and he threw her away; and that was the end of the last fairy I ever
heard of in the island.” The last sparks in the wooden logs at Avignon were my last fairies.

Among our hostess’s books was the authorised report of the trial for the murder of Madame la Marquise de Gange. It
is so interesting, and has so strong a local flavour, that we are determined, blow high, blow low, to go over to
Ville-Neuve to-morrow, and see her portrait by Mignard in the Eglise de l’Hôpital at Ville-Neuve. She lived in the
seventeenth century, and was the daughter of a certain Sieur de Rossau, a gentleman of Avignon, who had married an
heiress, the daughter of Joanis Sieur de Nochères. Her father died when she was very young; and she and her mother went
to live with the Sieur de Nochéres, probably in one of the large gloomy houses in the narrow old streets we have passed
through to-day, with no windows on the lower floor, only strongly-barred gratings; they are almost like fortified
dwellings — which, indeed, the state of affairs at the time they were built required them to be. The little girl
promised to be a great beauty, and bad besides a dowry of 500,000 livres; and it was no great wonder that all the
well-born young men of Provence (and some who were not young, too), came a-wooing to the grand-daughter of the rich old
burgess of Avignon. But where force was so often employed as a method of courtship, and at a time when obstacles to
success (in the way of fathers or mothers or obstinate relations) were so easily got rid of by determined suitors, it
was thought better to arrange an early marriage for the little girl, who was called Mademoiselle de Châteaublanc, after
one of the estates of her grandfather; and, accordingly, she was espoused in 1649, at the age of thirteen, by the
Marquis de Castellane, grandson of the Duc de Villars. Her husband is described as being as charming as his bride. He
was handsome and sweet-tempered, besides being a scion of a great French house. He took his lovely little bride to
Paris, where she was the admired of all beholders at the court of the young King Louis XIV His boyish majesty was
struck with her rare beauty, and conferred on her the honour of dancing with her in a court ballet; and the docile
courtiers followed his lead, and christened her “La belle Provençale,” by which name she was thereafter better
known than by her legitimate title of Marquise de Castellane.

When first she Came to town

They ca’ed her Jess MacFarlane,

But, now she’s come and gone,

They ca’ her The Wandering Darling.

Poor young Belle Provençale! admired by the King of France and all his men; living a bright, happy life of innocent
pleasure in Paris; with a charming husband, by whom she was passionately beloved, and whose affection she fondly
esteemed; rich, lovely, and of high rank — how little she could have anticipated her rapid descent from the pinnacle of
good fortune! Her first deep grief was the loss of her husband. He was drowned off the coast of Sicily; and she came
back from the gay life of Paris to mourn him deeply in the austere home of her grandfather, in the city of Avignon. The
only change she sought for in these years of mourning was to go into retreat in the convent at Ville-Neuve — the
village we saw on the opposite side of the Rhone, the other day, when we stood on the cathedral steps. The account of
her sorrow and regret at the death of her young husband is evidently so truthful and sincere that one almost wonders at
her marrying again; but I suppose in those days a bourgeois grandfather and a widowed mother were considered but poor
protectors for a beautiful young woman of great wealth.

At any rate, I read of her having, at length, selected from among many suitors the Sieur de Lanide, Marquis de
Gange, Baron du Languedoc, Gouverneur de St. André, to be her second husband. She was married to him in 1658, when he
was twenty, and she twenty-two years of age. He was as beautiful as she was, but of a violent and ferocious character.
For the first few months after their marriage he appeared to he devoted to her; but, by-and-by, he grew both weary of
her society and suspiciously jealous of all her former friends. It was rather a lonely life now for the poor lady, shut
up in her husband’s Chateau de Gange, while he went about enjoying himself in provincial society, and occasionally
visiting Paris, where once she had been so sought after and cherished. Still there is no account of her ever having
repined at this seclusion; of course, the official reports of events begin at a much later period. Things went on in
this way between the husband and wife for some time without any change. Then two of his brothers, the Abbé and the
Chevalier de Gange, came to live at the Château do Gauge; and a short time afterwards her old grandfather the Sieur do
Nochères died, leaving Madame de Gange his heiress. The Marquis, her husband, was much occupied in looking after the
various estates to which his wife had succeeded under her grandfather’s will. Gauge is seven leagues from Montpellier,
and nineteen from Avignon, in a lonely, wild district; the château was the principal house in a small village, the
inhabitants of which were dependants of the Marquis. But, for some little time after the Sieur de Nochères’ death, it
was necessary for his heiress to be in Avignon; and, whether it was, as the rumour went at the time, that she had
reason to suspect that a cream which, one day at her mother’s table, her husband pressed her much to eat was poisoned
with arsenic, or whether she remembered the horoscope drawn for her in Paris which predicted that she should die a
violent death, or whether, as is most likely, her seven or eight years’ knowledge of her husband’s character made her
fearful and suspicious, it is certain that before leaving Avignon at this time, she made a singular will, which was
attested with all possible legal forms, to this effect. Her mother was to be her sole heir, with power to leave all the
property after her death to either of the children which Madame de Gauge had had by her second husband; the boy was
six, the girl five years old at this time, and they were living with their grandmother at Avignon. Although this will
was executed in secret, she made a solemn declaration before the magistrates of Avignon to the effect that, though she
might be compelled to make a subsequent will, this and this alone was valid.

Poor lady! she had but too much reason to dread the time when she would be obliged to return to the lonely château,
far away from her friends, in the power of a cruel and negligent husband, who hungered after the uncontrolled and
unincumbered possession of her fortune, and who might leave her again, as he had done before, exposed to the profligate
and insolent solicitations of the Abbé, the cleverest of the three brothers, who had already traded on her misery at
her husband’s neglect and ill-concealed dislike of her, by saying that, if his sister-in-law would accede to his
wishes, he would bring her back her husband’s affection. The Chevalier seems to have been a brutal fool, under the
influence of his clever brother, the Abbé. In the interval between her grandfather’s death and her return to the
Château de Gange, these three brothers veiled their designs under an appearance of the greatest complaisance to Madame
de Gauge. But all their seeming attention and consideration, all her husband’s words and acts of lover-like devotion,
ended in this question — How soon would she go back to the Château de Gange? Avignon was unhealthy in hot weather,
while the autumn, the vintage-season, was exquisite at the château. At length, wearied out with their urgency, and
dreading the consequences of too persistent a refusal, she left Avignon for La Gange. But, first, she gave the sum of
twenty pistoles to different convents, to say masses for her soul, in case of her dying suddenly without extreme
unction. It gives one an awful idea of the state of society in those days (reign of Charles II. in England), to think
of this help less young woman, possessed by a too well-founded dread, yet not knowing of any power to which she could
appeal for protection, and obliged to leave the poor safety of a city to go to a lonely house, where those who wished
her evil would be able to work their will.

At the Chateau de Gange she found the two brothers-in-law, who had returned from Avignon a few days previously, and
her mother-in-law, a good, kind woman, to whose presence one fancies the young Marquise must have clung. But the
Dowager Marquise habitually lived at Montpellier, and she returned there soon after the Marquise’s arrival. While the
old lady had remained in the château, all had gone on well; but on her departure the Marquis set off back to Avignon,
leaving instructions to his brothers to coax his wife into making another will. They performed their work skilfully;
they told her there could be no perfect reconciliation with her husband, until she had shown full confidence in him by
bequeathing him all her property in case of her death. For the sake of peace, and remembering her secret testament at
Avignon, she agreed to their wishes; and a will, leaving all her property unconditionally to her husband, was made at
the Château de Gange. It was short-sighted of the poor lady, if she valued her life. They at any rate did not value it;
and now, the sooner they got rid of her the better. So much is stated in the report of the trial on authority, which
seems to have satisfied the judges at the time. For the further events, there is the direct testimony of the Marquise
on her death-bed and of other witnesses; and there are curious glimpses of the manners of the period, as well as of the
state of society.

The dramatis personae were disposed of as follows, on the 17th of May, 1667:— The mother of these three
wicked sons — the Marquis, the Abbé, and the Chevalier de Gauge — was at her house in Montpellier; the Marquis himself
was tarrying in the neighbourhood of Avignon, ostensibly employed in looking after the estates of his wife; she was at
the château in the lonely village, keeping up the farce of friendly politeness with her brothers-in-law, whom she
dreaded inexpressibly. There was a chaplain in the house, who was their tool, as she well knew; and a few neighbours
from the village came to see her from time to time, the wives of the Intendant and of the Huguenot minister;
worthy and kindhearted women, as will be proved, though not of the class of society to which she had been accustomed in
the happy days in Paris. On the 17th of May, she required some medicine, and sent for a draught to the village doctor.
When it came, it was so black and nasty that she took some physic which she had ready in her chamber instead, and threw
the draught away. A pig which licked up the draught died that same day. She was not well, and stopped in bed for the
whole morning; but in the afternoon, finding it rather dull, she sent for two or three of the good women of the
neighbourhood to come and keep her company, and ordered a collation to be served to her friends in her bedroom. Her
indisposition, whatever it was, does not seem to have affected her appetite; for she deposed that she ate a great deal,
and to that fact she attributes her safety from one way of attacking her life.

The Abbé and the Chevalier, hearing of their sister-in-law’s party, and the entertainment that was going on, came
into the chamber uninvited, and made themselves very agreeable. By-and-by, the neighbours went away; it was still early
in the afternoon; and the Abbé and Chevalier accompanied the good ladies to the great hall, and Madame was left alone
in bed. Presently back came the Abbé, with a terrible face; he brought a pistol, a sword, and a cup of poison — a
greater choice of deaths than that offered to Fair Rosamond; but, all the same, the Marquise must die by either fire,
steel, or poison. With quick presence of mind she chose to drink the latter; and after doing so, she turned round as in
writhing agony, and spat out the contents of her mouth into the pillow. Her skin was blackened by the burning drops
that fell upon it, and her mouth was horribly burnt; and no wonder, for the deposition says that the drink was made of
arsenic and corrosive sublimate, mixed up in aqua-fortis. There was evidently no idea of doing things by halves in
those days! She left the thick part of the liquid in the bottom of the glass; but the Chevalier, who by this time had
come up to see if he could render himself useful in the business, stirred up the sediment and made her drink it. Then
she begged hard to have a priest to shrive her soul; and, as they felt pretty secure that no help could now avail her,
they went away, and sent the household chaplain, le Prêtre Perrette, who was also curé of the
village, to give her what spiritual aid he could. He had lived in the de Gauge family for five-and-twenty years, and
was ready to connive at any wickedness which they might plan.

Now, while they went to find this worthy chaplain, the poor lady was left alone in her bed-chamber, and looked about
for means of escape. There was none, except jumping from the window into the great enclosed court-yard, twenty feet
below, and all paved with flags; but that risk was better than remaining where she was; so she took courage, and was on
the point of throwing herself out, when Perrette, the chaplain, came in with the viaticum. He ran to the window, and
tried to pluck her back; but the petticoat which he caught hold of gave way, and only a fragment of it remained in his
hand. She was down below, pushing her long black hair down her throat, and thus, with wonderful presence of mind,
trying to make herself sick; in which attempt she succeeded. Then she went round the court-yard, trying all the doors
with trembling haste but they were all locked; and that wicked chaplain in the chateau above was hastening to find the
relentless brothers-in-law and to tell them Of her escape. She ran round and round the enclosure, beating and striving
at the doors; and at length a groom came out of the stables which were at one end of the yard, whom she implored to let
her out by the stable-door into the street or road; saying she had swallowed some poison by mistake, and must find an
antidote without loss of time.

When she was once out of the accursed premises, she went to the house of the Sieur des Prats, who lived in the
village. He was absent; but many of the good women of the place were assembled there on a visit to his wife. We may
judge of the rank of the company by the fact that, in the depositions, all the married women are called
“Mademoiselle,” e.g., “Mademoiselle Brunel, wife of the Huguenot minister,” &c.; and in the
Traité sur la maniére d’Ecrire des Lettres, par Grimarest, 1667, the rules for the addresses to letters are
these:— If a letter is to a lady of quality, she is to be called “Madame” in the address, and the letter is to
be tied up with silk, and sealed with three seals; if the correspondent is only la femme d’un gentilhome, her
titles on the superscription must be “Mademoiselle Mademoiselle,” so and so; but if she is merely the wife of
a bourgeois, simple “Mademoiselle” is all that is to be accorded to her.

Now all the ladies assembled at the Sieur des Prats were Mademoiselles; but they were brave women, as we shall see.
In amongst this peaceful company, enjoying an afternoon’s gossip, burst the lady of the Château de Gange; her dress
(that which she had worn in bed) torn and disordered; her hair hanging about her; her face in all probability livid
with mortal terror and the effects of the fierce poison. She had hardly had time to give any explanation of her
appearance, when the Chevalier de Gange rushed into the room in search of his half-killed victim; the Abbé remained
below, guarding the door of the house. The Chevalier walked up and down the room, saying that Madame was mad; that she
must return with him, and uttering angry menaces. While his back was turned, Mademoiselle Brunel, wife of the Huguenot
minister of the village, gave Madame de Gange small pieces of orvietan out of a box which she carried in her pocket.
Orvietan, be it remembered, was considered a sovereign remedy against all kinds of poisons; and the fact of the
minister’s wife carrying this antidote about in her pocket, wherever she went, tells a good deal as to the insecurity
of life at that period. Madame de Gange managed to swallow a number of pieces of orvietan, unperceived by the
Chevalier; but when one of the ladies, pitying her burning thirst, went and brought her a glass of water, he perceived
the kindness, and broke out afresh, dashing the glass from Madame’s mouth, and bidding all present to leave the room
instantly, as he did not like witnesses to his sister-in-law’s madness. He drove them out, indeed, but they only went
as far as the next room, where they huddled together in affright, wondering what they could do for the poor lady. She,
meanwhile, begged for mercy in the most touching manner; she promised that she would forgive all, if he would but spare
her life: but at these words he ran at her with his sword; holding it short, so that it could serve him as a dagger and
give the surer stabs. She ran to the door, and clung to it, crying out afresh for pity, for mercy, for help. He stabbed
her five times before his weapon broke in her shoulder.

Then the ladies burst in to the assistance of Madame, who was lying on the floor bathed in blood. Some ran to her
help; others called through the window to the passers-by to fetch the surgeon quickly. Hearing their cry through the
window, the Abbé came up; and, finding his sister-in-law not yet dead, he began to hit her with the butt-end of his
pistol, till brave Mademoiselle Brunel caught hold of his arm, and hung all her weight upon it. He struck her over and
over again, to make her let go; but she would not; and all the women flew upon him “like lionesses,” and dragged him by
main force out of the house, and turned him into the village-street. One of the ladies, who was skilled in surgery,
returned to the room where Madame de Gange lay; and at her desire she put her knee against the wounded shoulder of
Madame, and pulled out the broken point of the sword by main force. Then she staunched the blood, and bound up the
wounds. The Chevalier had been in too blind a passion, apparently, to think of stabbing any vital part; and, in spite
of poison, and the heavy fall on the paved court-yard, and the five stabs, there seemed yet a chance for Madame de
Gange’s life. That long and terrible May afternoon was now drawing to a close; and the Abbé and the Chevalier thought
it well to take advantage of the coming darkness to ride off to Auberas, an estate of their brother’s, about a league
from La Gange. There they quarrelled with each other, because their work was left incomplete, and were on the point of
fighting, when it seems as if they thought it better to take again to flight. After the steed was stolen, every one
bethought him of locking the stable door. The “consuls”, as the magistrates of the district were called, came to offer
their services to Madame de Gange, who was lying between life and death. The neighbouring barons paid her visits of
condolence; one of them was practical enough to think of securing the assassins; but two or three days had then
elapsed, and the Abbé and Chevalier had embarked at Ogde, a small port on the Mediterranean.

Her husband, the Marquis, took the affair very coolly. He heard of it at Avignon one morning; but he did not mention
it to any friends whom he met in the street, nor did he set off to see his wife till the afternoon of the following
day. But he had the will, which his wife had been compelled to make at La Gange, safe with him at Avignon; and before
he left the city, he went to see the Vice-Legate, with a view to this document, by which his wife bequeathed him all in
case of her death. The Vice-Legate refused to recognise it, and then first informed him of the will by which Madame de
Gange had left her property to her mother, and which rendered null any testament made after that date. The Marquis was
not induced by this information to be more tender towards his poor wounded wife. He found her lying at the house of the
Sieur des Prats, in the most dangerous state. At first she reproached him a little for leaving her at the mercy of his
brothers; but almost directly she begged his pardon for what she had said, and was most tender and sweet in her
conversation with him. He thought he could take advantage of her gentle frame of mind, and urged her to revoke her
declaration about the perpetual legality of the Avignon will; but his pertinacity on this point at such a time opened
her eyes, and henceforward she had no hope of touching his stony heart. Her mother, Madame de Ropace, came to see her;
but she was so disgusted at seeing the Marquis’s pretended affection and assumption of watchful care over his wife,
that she left at the close of three days. It was evident now to all that the end was drawing near; the wounds did not
touch life, but enough of the poison had been swallowed to destroy any constitution. Madame de Gauge begged to have the
extreme unction administered; but the monks in attendance said that, before that could be done, she must forgive all
her enemies. She was too gentle to harbour revenge; but when Perrette, the chaplain, and the accomplice of her
assassins, came in his sacred vestments to administer the last sacrament, it did cost her a severe struggle to receive
the wafer from his hands. But she forgave him, too, as completely as the rest; and, fearing that her little son might
at some future time think it his duty to avenge her death, she sent for him, and tried to make him understand the
Christian duty of forgiveness. Meanwhile, the report of her assassination had spread far and wide, and the Parliament
of Toulouse despatched Monsieur de Catelan to La Gange to take her evidence as that of a dying woman. When he first
came, she was in a state of stupor; but the next day she rallied and saw him alone. A fresh terror had seized upon her,
and she believed herself not safe at La Gauge, and entreated him to take her to Montpellier; but it was too late then,
and in the afternoon she died, nineteen days after the attack upon her life.

Monsieur de Gange now became alarmed, and pretended to be in the deepest distress, and that his grief could only be
alleviated by the discovery and punishment of the murderers of his dear wife. But the unmoved M. de Catelan arrested
him, and took the charge of prosecution and punishment for the crime upon himself, in the name of the Parliament of
Toulouse. The effects of the Marquis were sealed up, and he was to be conveyed to the prison at Montpellier: but he
could not arrive there before night for some reason; and the inhabitants of the town illuminated it in order that the
populace might see the face of the accused criminal, as he came slowly up the street. The ladies of Avignon, and those
of Montpellier, put on mourning for the murdered Madame de Gange, as if she had been a near relation. Her mother, of
whom we hear very little until now, led the chorus of feminine indignation. She vowed vengeance against the Marquis,
and swore that she would pursue him through every court of justice in the kingdom, till her daughter was avenged. She
published a pamphlet on the case, to which M. de Gange replied, saying that her statements were all based on
presumption. But the stern hand of the law was upon him, and from it he could not so easily escape. M. de Catelan twice
interrogated the Marquis, the last time for eleven hours; the basis on which he founded his questions being not
“presumptions,” but the evidence which the lawyer had obtained from the dying Madame de Gange in that interview which
they two had had alone. On the 21st of August, 1667, judgment was given through the mouth of the President of the
Parliament of Toulouse. It was always supposed by the public that the powerful relations of the Marquis had used unfair
means to mitigate the severity of the sentence. But it was severe enough, if only it had been carried into execution.
The Abbé and the Chevalier de Gauge were to be broken alive upon the wheel. The Marquis was to be banished for life, to
be degraded from his rank, and to have all his lands, goods, and property confiscated to the use of the king. The
chaplain, Perrette, was to be deprived of ecclesiastical orders, and to become a galley-slave for life.

The ladies of Avignon and Montpellier were indignant that the Marquis de Gange was not to be broken on the wheel as
well as his brothers. But where were these three guilty men? The Abbé and the Chevalier had escaped by sea, months ago;
and now the Marquis had made his way out of the prison of Toulouse; prison doors, in those days, had a fatal facility
in opening before rank or wealth. The Marquis and the Chevalier met in Venice — escaped felons as they were. But they
took service for the Republic; and, being good Christians, they went to fight the heathen Turks in Candia, where they
met an honourable death in 1669. The Abbé, superior in intellect to the others, lived a longer and more eventful life.
He fled into Holland, and after some wanderings about he met with an old acquaintance, who was unscrupulous, or perhaps
was ignorant of his crime, and who introduced him to the Count de la Lippe, sovereign prince of Viane, about two
leagues from Utrecht. To him the Abbé de Gauge was presented as the Sieur de la Martellière, a Frenchman of
extraordinary learning and merit, of the Huguenot or Protestant religion, who was consequently under social
disadvantages in his own country. The Count was pleased with the appearance and manners of the so-called Sieur de la
Martellière, and appointed him governor, or tutor, to his son, a little boy of nine or ten years old.

But by-and-by the persecution of the French Huguenots began, and hundreds of them were leaving France, some one of
whom might recognise the former Abbé de Gange, in the Protestant Sieur de la Martellière; so he opposed the settlement
of French refugees in the neighbourhood of Viane on purely political reasons. He had been governor to the son of the
Count de la Lippe for several years, when he fell desperately in love with a beautiful young girl, a distant relation
of the Countess’s, who lived with her. His poverty and his dependent position were no obstacles to his marriage with
the lovely portionless maiden; but the obscurity of his supposed birth made a marriage between them impossible. He
presumed on his services to the Count, and on the years of moral conduct which he had passed under the Count’s own
eyes. He wrote an eloquent letter, in which he confessed himself to be that Abbé de Gange for whom the kingdom of
France had been ransacked in vain; pleading false witness, perjury, passion, whatever you will, in extenuation of the
crime of which he was accused; but proving his sixteen quarterings through it all. He spoke of his many years’ life of
pure morality, such as the Count de la Lippe himself could bear witness to; of his conversion to the faith which the
sovereign Prince of Viane held himself, and of his zeal in its interests: had he not advised the Huguenot refugees not
to tarry where the long arm of France might reach them, but to fly further east?

His eloquence was all in vain. The Count de la Lippe seems to have been shocked beyond measure at finding out that
in the tutor of his little boy — his growing lad — he had been harbouring the profligate, terrible, and infamous Abbé
de Gange, with whose crimes all civilised Europe had been made acquainted. The Sieur de la Martellière was ordered to
leave the dominions of the Count de la Lippe without delay. He went to Amsterdam, and thither also, without delay, the
young girl — the poor, pretty relation of Madame la Comtesse — followed him, and became his wife. His pupil, the young
Count, now growing up to manhood, although told by his father what an infamous criminal he had had for tutor,
persevered in sending help to the Sieur de la Martellière and his wife at Amsterdam; until some unexpected fortune from
one of Madame’s relations put them at ease, as far as regarded money. M. de la Martellière bore so high a character
that he was admitted into the Consistory of Protestants at Amsterdam. But, wherever he went — at church or) at synod,
in market or alone with his wife in their most humble secret privacy, he was haunted by the face of Madame de Gange.
That was said at the time; that is believed still.

The poor lady’s daughter did not do her much credit, and I will say nothing about her. The son, whom she had taught
forgiveness on her death-bed, became a captain of dragoons; and, when at Metz, suppressing the Huguenots (perhaps he
had never been told of Mademoiselle Brunel, and how she had helped and defended his mother in her great strait), he
fell in love with the beautiful wife of a goldsmith. The dragoons were billeted at her house, and tried to force her,
at the point of the bayonet, to go to mass. Apparently, her religion was dearer to her than her virtue; for she sent
for the captain, and said to him:— “Monsieur, vous m’avez dit que vous m’aimez; voulez-vous me le prouver?
donnez-moi les moyens de sortir du royaume; et pour récompense de ce service, que votre amour s’imagine le prix.”
“Non, Madame,” said the Marquis, “je ne me prévaudrai point de votre situation; je serais au comble de mes
voeux si vous accordiez à ma tendresse ce que je pourrais obtenir où vous êtes, mais je me reprocherais toute ma vie
d’abuser de votre état; je vais vous en délivrer; je ne vous demande pour récompense que la grâce de penser quelquefois
à moi.” After that, he sent her secretly across the frontier.

I shut up my landlady’s books, and prepared to go to bed. I am alone in the lofty salon, which was perhaps
in existence when Madame de Gauge used to reside in Avignon; the fire is gone out, the lamp flickers. The
ever-persistent wind is tearing round the house. Mary and Irene are fast asleep in the chambers beyond. The quietness
of all things, the dead stillness of the hour, has made me realise all the facts deposed to, as if they had only
happened to-day. Tomorrow we will go to Ville-Neuve, and see the portrait of the murdered lady.

March 16th. — Though the mistral has but little abated, we went across to Ville-Neuve
this morning. Irene was not well enough to go; so Mary and I, attended by Demetrius, our courier, made the expedition.
Demetrius has no fancy for excursions off the common route, and only went with us, because he thought himself bound in
duty to humour our eccentricity. The suspension-bridge over the Rhone was shaking and trembling with the wind as we
crossed it; and our struggle in that long exposure was so exhausting, that when we were once in the comparative
tranquillity of the other side, we stood still and looked about us for some time before going on. The colour of the
landscape on each side of the rushing river was a warm grey; rocks, soil, buildings, all the same. There was but little
vegetation to be seen; a few olive-trees, of a moonlight green, grew in sheltered places. We thought it must be like
the aspect of Palestine, from Stanley’s account; and Demetrius, who had been several times in the Holy Land, confirmed
this notion of ours; but then he was rather apt to confirm all our notions, provided they did not occasion him extra
trouble. After we had crossed the bridge, we turned to the right, and went along a steep rocky road to the summit of
the hill, above Ville-Neuve. Below us lay the town founded by Philippe le Bel, but completed by the Popes resident at
Avignon, and fallen to comparative decay ever since the papal seat was re-established at Rome.

We dropped down to the centre of the old town; the buildings in it were of the same massive construction as the
palace, three miles off, at Avignon; the houses were very lofty, and built of solid blocks of rough yellow-grey stone.
There were arcades beneath their lower stories, and but little space between the two sides of the winding streets for
carriages or horses. The way through the town was so tortuous that there was no bit of distance ever seen; and we felt
as if we had fallen into a crevasse. Not a person was in the deserted streets. After trying at one or two
porte-cochères, we at length hit upon the convent in which there was the portrait of Madame de Gange, painted
by Mignard, her famous contemporary. A nun, in attendance upon the hospital at the end of the court-yard, came to
receive us, and was all surprise at our request to see the picture. Was it not the famous painting of “The Last
Judgement,” done by the good King Réné, that we wished to look at? At any rate, both pictures hung side by side in the
ante-chapel to our right on entering. So we went in, and gazed at the face of the heroine of the tragical history we
had been reading the night before. She was dressed, like our guide the nun, in a black and white conventual dress, such
as I suppose she would assume when en retraite after her first husband’s death; she held red and white roses
in her hands, in her scapular;. the lovely colour was needed by the painter, or perhaps La Belle Provençale
was fond of the flowers. Her face was one of exquisite beauty and great peacefulness of expression-round rather than
oval; dark hair, dark eyebrows, and blue eyes; there was very little colour excepting in the lips. You would have
called it the portrait of a sweet, happy, young woman, innocently glad in her possession of rare beauty.

After gratifying the nun by looking at the newly-painted and tawdry chapel beyond, and by doing our utmost to feel
admiration for King Réné’s picture, we left the convent. For a minute or two we were full of Madame de Gange; then, I
am sorry to say, the carnal feeling of hunger took possession of us, after our long walk; and we sent Demetrius off in
every direction to buy us a cake — bread — anything eatable. He came back to where we were sitting under the shelter of
a rock. There was no shop for eatables, not even an hotel, or a restaurant, or a café, or an
estaminet. So we came back to the Hôtel de l’Europe, Avignon, with very good appetites for the table
d’hôte.

March l7th. — A telegram from Marseilles. A boat starts to-day for Civita Vecchia.

This web edition published by:

eBooks@Adelaide
The University of Adelaide Library
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005